Lost in Paradise
by Experimental
Summary: Follows Damaged and Gone to Earth. On the surface, it's return to status quo for Enma-cho, but nothing is the same. Tsuzuki is still missing, for certain in Muraki's clutches. And this time Hisoka isn't sure the damage he caused is something anyone, least of all he, can fix. Though he will try, even if it costs him his existence.
1. Wide awake

**Author's note:** _The following is the third part in my **Damaged**_ _series, following Damaged (naturally) and Gone to Earth. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time recapping in this part, just jump in where I left off, so fair warning it might be useful to have at least a skimming idea of what went on in part two. It is my hope, however, that you will find it interesting regardless._

 _Standard_ YnM _content warnings apply._

 _For HopeOfDawn, who introduced me to_ YnM _and Evanescence, thereby linking them forever in my mind, and whom I blame for this enduring fascination._

* * *

Lost in Paradise

—=o=—

 _{You might wake up some mornin'_

 _To the sound of something moving past your window in the wind. . . .}_

Consciousness filters in slowly.

His surroundings: an Impressionist painting in shades of white. Cotton on his skin. The bright light of morning. The scent of antiseptic: biting, metallic.

And that song. Beats of tambourine going round and round his brain, each English word stretched out an eternity. Toruses of musical sunshine, splitting his head open wide awake.

 _{And if you're quick enough to rise_

 _You'll catch the fleeting glimpse of someone's fading shadow. . . .}_

Tsuzuki tried to rise.

A grunt, and the sharp pain in his chest put him back down. Sightlessly, he put his fingers to the source of the hurt. Linen bandages surrounding his chest beneath a soft yukata, holding a gauze pad over his heart. Slight pressure of his fingertips gave way to tenderness in the flesh. Unexpected. He hissed.

And remembered. The gun in Ukyou's hands, trying to convince her to lower it. . . . Muraki making a move and the gun going off and . . .

He had died for a moment. Immortality had brought him back, as his flesh began to stitch itself back together.

But something wasn't right. This wound should have been long healed by now. And why did he feel so weak?

Drugs? A shinigami's body was still susceptible to their effects. But drugs wouldn't leave him feeling so drained, so hot and unsteady and light-headed, like he was on the mend from an intense fever.

 _{Don't be concerned_

 _It will not harm you_

 _It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of. . . .}_

He pushed through the pain. His arm still worked, and was able to set him up. His vision reeled; he couldn't say how long it had been since he'd been upright; and when it stabilized again, he saw a room with spare but comfortable furnishings. Almost old-fashioned. Harkening back to—

No. It couldn't be. The same rattan chair from the clinic? The one the doctor's orderlies had set him up in day after day, in some hopeless attempt to get him to speak, to make an effort to keep living. . . .

And that nightstand . . . He remembered glass bottles on it, not a vase of roses. The glass he broke. It cut his wrists so neatly. . . .

The roses had none of that same potential. They even lacked thorns. Tyrian purple, he thought the color was called, more red than violet, in an otherwise pale room. Like wine. Or the blood of mollusks. It was like staring into his own eyes.

Tsuzuki slid off the bed and onto his feet. Stood there for a moment until he was certain they would support his weight. The song played on in a jaunty, repeating melody of airy violins, taunting him. He wanted to turn it off. He wanted silence. He needed to think.

 _{You might have heard my footsteps_

 _Echo softly in the distance through the canyons of your mind_

 _I might have even called your name_

 _As I ran searching after something to believe in. . . .}_

An old gramophone played the offending record on a table just outside his room in the hall.

Tsuzuki braced himself against the wood of the door frame. He had spent too much of what strength he could muster on just the walk this far. The furnace that had started to burn out inside him found some new fuel, sweat trickling down his brow. His knees shook, and he saw the bandage blossom with fresh blood beneath the fold of his robe. The record spun in his peripheral vision, bringing a tide of vertigo.

"Do you understand English?"

By now, it was no surprise to hear Muraki's voice. His last waking memory was of being taken up in that man's arms, again, unable to stop himself from being spirited away. That voice had been there in his dreams, what little of them he could recall.

 _{. . . It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of_

 _Across my dreams_

 _With nets of wonder_

 _I chase the bright elusive butterfly of l—}_

Muraki raised the needle off the record and set it aside. And Tsuzuki let his eyes fall closed and breathed in the blessed silence.

"Enough," he said through dry lips. He understood enough to feel like that butterfly, being endlessly chased. Once he had envied their freedom, from his bed in the elder Muraki's clinic, before he knew what new chains death would bring. Reality was hard enough without being mocked by music as well.

"It was a popular song when I was a child. I remember Mother playing it often. On repeat. Even before I learned what the lyrics meant, I think I could sense the longing in it. The feeling of being obsessed with such a distant, intangible thing."

 _Again, with that tired old line? It's not like he's never caught me before._

But when Tsuzuki looked up, something stared back at him from Muraki's eyes that surprised him. He had seen it before, when Muraki had tended the wounds of that little girl in the park, the day they first met. The doctor reveled in his power to fix people.

Only now Tsuzuki understood that breaking them was no less fun for Muraki than putting them back together.

"In some cultures, butterflies are believed to be the souls of deceased loved ones, returning to visit the living. When I was young, I often wondered: If such an unlikely thing turned out somehow to be true, whose soul was coming to visit me? Can you guess who I was hoping it might be, Tsuzuki?"

 _And now you finally have me. Don't you? Your elusive butterfly._ "Where am I?"

A twitch of a smile. "My sanctuary."

Which was somehow less than an answer; it told Tsuzuki nothing. "How long?"

"A little more than a week."

 _More than a week . . ._ Since that night at Ukyou's house when everything had happened. It seemed like yesterday and a lifetime ago and a dream all at once. A week since she had been taken by the devils. A week since Enma's forces had come for him, and Hisoka—

Had burned up in Rikugou's light.

God, he didn't _want_ to remember! It had to have been a dream. Otherwise . . . _Otherwise_ . . .

Tsuzuki hardly noticed as he sank to the floor. This ache in his chest wasn't from his wound, but it seemed to cut right through and twist in his heart, over and over. He wanted to scream it away, but he couldn't even catch his breath for it. _He's gone. He's really dead. And because of me. . . ._

He didn't push away the fingers that gently wiped the tears from his cheek. Muraki crouched beside him, his voice tender, and for once Tsuzuki didn't feel like fighting it. What would be the point anyway? Who would he be fighting for?

"You were shot. The bullet punctured your aorta and a lung. I expected you to heal quickly, as you always do, but you did not. During the fight, one of your colleagues hit you in the back with a blade. I presume it was laced with some sort of toxin, one which I've yet to identify but which appears to disrupt your body's ability to heal itself."

A poisoned blade could explain the way he felt. If Tsuzuki didn't know Muraki better. "You drugged me."

For a moment, Muraki looked as though he was going to deny it.

"Yes," he said at last, reluctantly. "But only to keep you at peace. Keeping you unconscious seemed the only way to do that. When you were awake, you were delirious with the pain, and unable to move much regardless, except to worsen your wounds. My intent in putting you under was to spare you from that hell and stop the bleeding the best that I could. Do you not remember?"

Tsuzuki tried to find any memory of that time . . . but failed. Shook his head.

"Please give me some credit, Tsuzuki. I may be a monster, but I am not without feeling. It still pains me to see you suffer at the hands of others."

"Right," Tsuzuki groaned, since he couldn't bear to laugh. "That's _your_ job. You're the only one who's allowed to hurt me, aren't you?"

"Ultimately I have your best interest at heart," said Muraki, "no matter what I may do to you. You may not want to believe me, but the sooner you accept that truth, the better."

"And I suppose you plan to keep me locked up in this place indefinitely? A playmate for your sadistic games?"

"No," Muraki chuckled softly. Almost sympathetically. "I will let you leave here—"

"When you've used me up?"

"When you're ready. And not a moment before."

* * *

 _To be continued._

 _{lyrics} borrowed from "Elusive Butterfly" by Bob Lind. Take a listen and tell me it doesn't sound a tad stalker-y._


	2. Whole again

**Author's note:** _Thanks, everyone, for the support on my first chapter of this story! It was good to hear from you guys again, and I am happy to be able to give these chapters to you for as long as I can keep this streak up. Cheers!_

 _Jumping right in where Gone to Earth left off in this chapter, including some original characters and minor canon characters who appeared in previous parts of the arc, so fair warning._

* * *

Hisoka had thought there were no new types of pain to imagine. Yet a month spent in isolation in the infirmary, watching his own right arm and most of his legs slowly grow back, was an entirely unique and novel experience. Not the most excruciating thing he'd ever been through, not by a long shot, but a hell in its own right, for its own reasons.

It was a month he had to be stuck in bed rather than out there looking for Tsuzuki, or solving Summons cases with his colleagues. A month left alone with his thoughts. And a month of extreme restless leg, and restless arm, and restless everything syndrome and being treated like a very special patient.

Hisoka _loathed_ being treated like a very special patient.

Of course, Watari was fascinated by the whole process. "I gotta be honest, none of us knew for sure if your limbs would grow back. Reattaching severed arms and legs and even heads is one thing, but starting all over from scratch? There aren't many cases of it happening even in the literature, and you never know how much of those old stories about how shinigami bodies work was just pulled out of someone's arse." He didn't exactly have a tactful bedside manner, but Hisoka rather appreciated being talked to like someone who could actually understand what was happening to his own body.

The prodding around the new growth, not so much. It tickled, and not in a good way. As if there _was_ a good way.

It had been particularly bad when his knees came in. Hisoka tried to keep his legs still when Watari checked their progress, but it was damn near impossible. The new flesh started to hurt if it wasn't able to move. Except, moving didn't feel particularly pleasant either. "Well, it looks like muscle and nerves are coming back normally, so at least you shouldn't need physical therapy. Should be up and walking again, I imagine, as soon as you grow some feet. Wish I could speed the process along for ya a bit, but it's not as though I've got a bottle of Skele-Gro in my medicine cabinet. Sure would come in handy. . . .

"The muscle memory might take a little longer to come back, though. For the finer motor skills."

"You mean I'll have to learn to fence and shoot all over again?" Hisoka knew it was useless to be angry at himself for something that was beyond his ability to control, but still.

"Well, sort of, Bon. It's a bit like RAM versus ROM," Watari began, but Hisoka stopped him right there. He didn't need any of Watari's analogies to understand.

"Yet somehow, though half my body gets burnt away, the curse comes right back." Flexing his left hand, which had sustained only minor damage in the form of some truncated fingers and thus had come back first, he could see the red lines beneath his skin.

When his burns had first started to heal, a little hope had grown in Hisoka that he had finally managed to find a way to escape Muraki's curse. He couldn't see any sign of it. But by the next week, it was clear: he'd only been unable to see the lines beneath the scar tissue. Once his skin was fresh and pink, they showed up like a new tattoo.

"You take with you in death what was a part of you in life," Watari told him.

"Yeah. I know. I guess I just didn't want to think of Muraki as a part of me."

He had no memory of being brought to bed after the incident that put him there. Just summoning Rikugou, seeing Tsuzuki among the wreckage and knowing he had to save him. Then seeing Muraki beside him, and losing control. He remembered being consumed by anger—as if all the hate he'd ever felt for Muraki was resurfacing all at once—and an overwhelming desire to see that man burn and burn until there was nothing left. He had only the faintest memory of being consumed by Rikugou's light.

It was too traumatic to remember, Watari said when he asked about his missing memory, but the scientist was unusually spare with details. "You were little more than a charred head and torso with some stubs on it," Watari would say when pressed. "You really gonna make me think about all that again?"

But there was more, more that he was holding back on purpose, not just because it made him physically uncomfortable. Watari wasn't a bad liar, either, when it came to hiding his true feelings from Hisoka's empathy. Maybe he didn't notice the slight changes in his behavior around Hisoka, the way he couldn't quite meet the boy's eyes like he used to do so easily. Watari was feeling guilty about . . . something, but Hisoka so far had no clue what it was.

Hisoka just bided his time. He hadn't remembered what Muraki did to him at first either, but it came back. Even though remembering had put him through the pain of it all over again, he had been grateful at least to know. Knowledge was something he could hold on to. It was something he could use.

Now he could say he was nearly whole again. Only his feet had yet to reach full size, and for now they looked like doll feet, with polyps for toes. Even when Hisoka put socks over them they looked weird. But he could walk on them, and that was all that mattered.

"Thanks for everything, Watari, but I can't stay here anymore," he told the man when he came in to bring Hisoka his morning cup of tea. "I'm going back to work."

"Today?" Watari blinked. "But . . . we haven't had time to plan a welcome back party for you yet."

As though that was something Hisoka would even want. "Everyone's hard at work but me. Reading up on case files may keep me from dying of boredom, but it isn't doing anyone else any good." Though he was grateful Tatsumi had at least let him do that while he healed. "I need to be out there in the living world, helping people. Doing my job."

"And your injuries? You sure everything's grown back?"

"As long as I keep my shoes on, I'll be fine." Besides, he was sure his toes would be back to their normal size by the end of the day. Tomorrow morning at the latest.

Watari looked for all the world like he wanted to keep protesting that Hisoka wasn't ready. Once again, it seemed there was something crucial he was holding back, some missing piece that would allow Hisoka to finally see the whole picture of what had happened that night.

But whatever it was, Watari was keeping a firm lid on it. No amount of probing on Hisoka's part did any good.

Then again, maybe Hisoka was just misreading regular-old concern, and hoping for something that wasn't there in the first place.

"Alright," Watari capitulated with a sigh. "I know I can't stop you, so I might as well release you. But promise me, Bon, you'll take it easy."

"I promise I won't run any marathons," Hisoka told him, though he knew that wasn't entirely what Watari had meant.

* * *

The whole walk to the office, Hisoka had been dreading just this.

Cheers of "Hisoka!" and "Kurosaki-kun!" and "You're back!" greeted him when he entered the offices of the Summons Division, mixed with curiosity and trepidation about the extent of his injuries.

Wakaba saw no problem with throwing her arms around his neck and giving him a long, firm hug. She, at least, knew to be careful about her emotions, and Hisoka was glad—and a little overwhelmed—that what she let him feel were not flashbacks of that night, but relief and welcome and love. "We're so glad you're okay," she whispered by his ear, and Hisoka thought he heard tears though she didn't let him see any.

"Yeah. It's good to have you back, kid."

He recognized the voice. But not the face it came out of. "T-Terazuma? Is that really . . .?"

Terazuma's stripes and pointy ears were gone, his jet-black hair a somewhat dull ebony. His face seemed just a tad rounder than usual, his shoulders not as wide or straight, and his eyes were a run-of-the-mill brown, missing the fire Hisoka was used to.

One thing remained the same, though: He bristled at Hisoka's surprise, and stuck an unlit cigarette in the corner of his lips.

"Kuro-chan left him," Wakaba explained in a low voice for Hisoka's benefit. "We're not entirely sure what happened. Just that when your shiki went into a frenzy, she got hit, trying to protect me and Nonomiya, and there's been no sign of her since—"

Though it hardly seemed like half of what they deserved from him, "I'm so sorry," Hisoka began to say. "Nobody told me—"

But Saya and Yuma each glomping onto an arm cut his apology short. "We thought we'd lost you forever!" Saya wailed, tears streaming down her cheeks, and Yuma said that if she'd known Hisoka was going to come back today, she would have made a cake. Or something to that effect. It was hard to tell exactly through her blubbering. Really, the two of them together were so overwhelming psychically, he couldn't focus on what they were saying.

A cleared throat made the two quiet and let go of him. Tatsumi stood by the open door of the chief's office, beckoning Hisoka in. _Just like old times. Everything back to normal, like nothing even happened._

This time when Hisoka stepped into the smaller room, however, Tatsumi did not follow him. Just closed the door behind him, with a knowing grin.

It was Konoe who rose from behind the desk to greet Hisoka, clapping him on the shoulders but stopping short of an embrace. Still, his "Welcome back" had a certain weight that felt to Hisoka like it was lifting him up; and he was so happy to see Konoe here once more, where he belonged.

"Does this mean you're back to being our chief?"

"I am." With a gentle hand, Konoe guided him to one of the chairs, and moved back around the desk again.

"If you don't mind my asking, sir, how did you score that coup? I've been worrying for a month that King Enma was going to punish our whole division for going over his head to find Tsuzuki, but it doesn't seem like anything's changed."

"I was as surprised as you are. Suffice it to say, it is his will that I am here now." Konoe did sober at that thought, however, and at what he had to say next. "There are a few strings attached, however. For starters, Enma requests a full accounting of all our parts in the matter."

"He wants us to write up a report? Like it was a case?"

"Yes, in a manner of speaking, that is precisely what he wants."

"But wouldn't that be like admitting to plotting treason?" Not that anyone actually had, but that was not to say their actions couldn't be construed that way. Were these reports just a way to make it easier for Enma to tailor each Summons agent's punishment to his or her exact crime, at the time of his choosing?

"Not the way I see it." Konoe carefully measured his words. "And I don't think Lord Enma plans to shake up Summons any more at this time—though I suppose I can't say if he plans to use our confessions against us when it comes time for us to retire from here. But that's a bridge to cross when we come to it. For now, we owe him our explanations. It's the least we can do to show we are still loyal subjects. And that we appreciate his clemency.

"Most of us have already turned ours in, but we can't speak for you, of course. I think everyone in Judgment is eager to learn how you survived the shikigami's explosion."

"But _I_ don't even know how I survived!" Surely there were other witnesses who could answer that question better than he could.

But then, their testimony would only further the mystery, as no one had been in Hisoka's unique place, engulfed in the fullness of Rikugou's power. No one that had survived, that was. "I didn't mean to do it. For that matter, I didn't mean for there to be an explosion either. I feel like I must have just . . ." There wasn't any other way to put it, Hisoka supposed: "Lost control. But King Enma won't like hearing that very much, will he?"

There was no point sugar-coating things for an empath, so Konoe didn't try. "Just write it as faithfully as you can remember it. That's really the best you can do with such an uncomfortable business. But before you get too far into that, I want you to take a look at these. Tell me what you think."

And so saying, he slapped a short stack of files on the end of his desk.

Hisoka took a cursory look. "These are different from the homework you've been sending to me." But the sectors and shinigami assigned to the cases were from all over Japan. "You think these are connected?"

"Did you get that from just a glance, or am I that obvious?"

Hisoka wasn't entirely sure Konoe meant that in a teasing fashion. "Sir, you usually don't want my opinion on other sectors' cases. I figured there had to be a good reason."

"Let's just say I have a hunch, and my hunches aren't usually wrong. Go and find yourself a nice quiet place to pore over those, Kurosaki. We'll meet back here at a quarter to noon to go over your first case back."

* * *

It felt good to be back in his old familiar haunts again. Even someplace as humdrum as the Judgment Bureau library was a welcome return to normalcy for Hisoka. He had always felt at peace among the stacks—both an audible and spiritual quiet—and the aura of knowledge and stability that surrounded the place.

The Gushoushin, for all their excitement to see Hisoka back, had in that same spirit recognized his desire to be alone with his thoughts and files and left him mostly to his own devices. Though they had been eager to help in whatever way they could. The Younger, especially, it seemed, wanted to ask Hisoka about the night he had seen Tsuzuki, but knew it was best to keep that conversation for when Hisoka brought it up himself, and clamped down on the urge to ask with all his willpower.

Hisoka thought he had a pretty good picture of things by the time he returned to the office, the files Konoe had given him tucked under his arm.

He experienced something of a start, however, to see Nonomiya already there with the chief, waiting for him. "You're still here?"

It came out much colder than it should have. That Hisoka realized when he saw Nonomiya's slight flinch, and could feel her hurt, and Konoe's embarrassment. "I mean," he was quick to amend in a gentler voice, "I thought you would be back with Peacekeeping by now."

"So did I," said Nonomiya. "But my chief thought it best if I stay on. For the meantime."

"Ms. Nonomiya is our new Peacekeeping liaison," Konoe said as he stood. "Officially."

"Right. Even if it is just a fancy way of saying my boss wants nothing to do with me. He still hasn't forgiven me for fighting alongside Summons, _obstructing_ his apprehension of Tsuzuki. . . ."

When she put it that way, her words laced with bitter frustration a lifetime and more of training kept in check, Hisoka couldn't help feeling sympathetic. It had been quite a risk for Nonomiya to stand up to her colleagues, throwing spells at them and defending Summons agents from their attacks. It was more than any of Summons had a right to ask of her, yet she had volunteered her help without hesitation. Because they were friends of Tsuzuki. How was she supposed to go back to Peacekeeping now, when everyone who used to work beside her saw her as a traitor?

Konoe said to Hisoka, "While you've been recovering, Ms. Nonomiya's been kind enough to help us out on a few cases, even though it goes beyond her new duties here. As you probably noticed from those files . . . Well, it should become obvious soon enough, if it isn't already, that Summons has had more on its proverbial plate lately than its usual number of staff can handle."

Tatsumi, Watari and Natsume were already in the briefing room when the three of them arrived, leaning over some strange contraption that the newcomers knew instantly was one of the mad scientist's inventions. A box of tea cookies sat next to it, one cookie already loaded into the device.

"Do I even want to know?" Konoe began.

"We were just running one of Watson's confections through my handy-dandy portable mass spectrometer," Watari said. "You three arrived not a moment too soon. We should have a result any second. . . ."

Tatsumi said, "It's been driving us mad trying to figure out what his secret ingredient is. How that man can be so talented in the kitchen is beyond my understanding."

"Especially when he needs to stand on a chair to reach the counters," Natsume put in.

Konoe felt like knocking all their heads together for wasting his time with this lunacy, and only hoped he wasn't somehow footing the bill for it. He could already feel the vein starting to pulse in his forehead. "The special ingredient is rose water. Watson puts a little bit into everything he bakes. Count's request."

"How do you know that?"

"I asked him! Of course."

"Of course!" Tatsumi hit his fist into his palm. "That would explain the high-class taste!"

Watari blinked up at him. "Somehow it shouldn't surprise me you can taste class, Tatsumi."

"It just had to be something expensive, didn't it? So much for my plans to replicate the recipe. . . ."

Natsume shrugged. "On the bright side, I was half prepared to find out the secret ingredient was Watson himself. Parts of him have been known to fall off on occasion."

"Just because the Count says Watson throws himself into everything he does doesn't mean you should take it literally." And so saying, Konoe grabbed one of the cookies and jammed it in his mouth.

A moment later, the mass spectrometer gave an anticlimactic ding. Watari stared intently at the results, before grumbling a barely audible "Essence of _Rosa damascena_. . . ."

Konoe cleared his throat. "Now, if the three of you are done wasting brain cells on this nonsense, I wanna bring the kid up on this latest string of cases we've been working, make sure we're all on the same page here."

"Certainly, Chief," said Tatsumi, back to his professional self with an adjusting of his specs.

They covered the old files first, cases involving patients staying in hospital who were scheduled to die after long battles with cancer, Alzheimer's, or a slew of other degenerative disorders—until their candles suddenly flared back to life in the Castle, stronger than they had been in life for a long time.

"We had no reason not to treat them all as separate cases initially," Konoe said. "They appeared in all corners of the country, and were all folks who were already being treated for disease. We had no reason to suspect when the first few came in that they might be part of a larger pattern."

"But by the next week, the number of similar incidents had doubled," a grave Tatsumi said. "And it kept climbing from there. Summons has hardly had a moment's rest between these cases, some of us working two of them at a time. Ms. Nonomiya has generously lent us her assistance in the field as well." He looked down at the table between them. "I don't mind saying that it has been an incredibly taxing few weeks for all of us."

Hisoka understood. You tried to distance yourself from your cases, but taking the souls of people who were desperate to live despite their suffering, in turn took its toll on the taker. That part of the job never got easier.

"But cancer patients go into remission all the time," Hisoka said. "We don't take their souls if they manage to get better."

"These were all, without exception, _terminal_ cases, Bon," Watari said. "Folks who'd already gotten their second opinion, and a third, and so on. They weren't so much receiving treatment for their diseases as they were being eased as gently as possible into the next life. Trust me, their miraculous recoveries were _not_ natural occurrences. Not to mention, the Kiseki never changed its mind. Their names were still written there. Whether we agree with it or not, our mission couldn't be clearer."

"So, maybe they were on some sort of new drug," Hisoka suggested. "Couldn't we trace that?"

"Yeah," said Natsume, "but each one was on their own particular _cocktail_ of drugs. We thought that might be the connection as well—"

"Except that whatever the substance in common was," Watari jumped in, _"_ _if_ it is in fact a substance we're looking for, it wasn't listed in their medical records and it didn't show up in any of the hospitals' reports. No one who's showed up for judgment so far has been much help, either. I'm thinking something experimental—something so secret, even the cases themselves didn't know what they were getting, or that they _were_ getting anything special."

"So, ironically, the fact that we have no clues may be one of the biggest clues we have," Nonomiya said. "It isn't ethical to just inject people with something without their knowledge or consent. But then, I don't need to remind Summons agents, of all people, that not everyone who works in medicine follows ethical guidelines. . . ."

Hisoka shook his head. "This is getting ridiculous. It seems kind of cliche by now to say it, but—"

"It sounds like something Muraki would be involved with?" Natsume finished for him. "Join the club. We all asked ourselves that when we first started noticing the similarities."

"Aside from the fact that these cases don't match what we're used to seeing from him," said Tatsumi, crossing his arms over his chest. "Where are the rumors of vampires or ghosts, raising corpses from the dead? If this is his handiwork, why would he suddenly be focusing his efforts on curing people?"

"Only we already established he _wasn't_ curing them," said Konoe. "According to the Kiseki, they were still considered dead men walking."

"You know what I mean. Whoever is doing this is making people better. Better than they have any right to be. It seems too altruistic. Especially for him."

Hisoka was wont to agree with Tatsumi on that, having experienced Muraki's emotional milieu personally. However altruistic Muraki's actions might _appear_ to be, Hisoka could never believe that man did anything because he actually cared about another human being. Though he couldn't hold it against Natsume either when he suggested, "I suppose it's too much to hope he's had a change of heart, started thinking about his immortal soul? Try to do some good in the world while he still can?"

But his question landed in the room as though it had been nothing but a bad joke all along.

"More likely," Konoe said, "we have to face the possibility that there's another person out there like him. Or, to be more precise, like his grandfather, Yukitaka."

It _did_ fit. The elder Dr. Muraki's fatal crime had been playing death-god, robbing Enma of his rightful dead, using what he had learned from Tsuzuki to keep people alive past their allotted years. The problem was, he had left far more failed experiments in his wake and caused far more untimely death and misery than what handful of medical miracles he had successfully performed.

But Muraki Yukitaka's soul had been destroyed by Enma, if Konoe and the Count's story was to be believed. It had to be someone else continuing his work, perhaps even unknowingly.

And if that were the case, what were the odds the grandson _didn't_ know about it?

"We haven't found any solid evidence of a connection between the Murakis and these cases," said Konoe, as though reading his mind. "But my instincts tell me the odds of them being unrelated are too great. And if I've learned anything in all my years here, that's to trust my intuition. And that of my agents."

"If a connection exists," said Hisoka, "we'll find proof of it. It's only a matter of time."

Natsume grinned. "And now that we have an empath back on the case, we should get to the bottom of this mystery that much faster."

Konoe nodded his concurrence. "I'm sending the two of you to Wakayama to visit the next person whose candle has suddenly flared back to life. _If_ you're feeling strong enough for it, Kurosaki."

"I'm fine." That wasn't what piqued Hisoka's concern. "But isn't Wakayama a bit outside Section Two's purview, sir?" Quite a bit, to say the least.

"We've been so inundated with cases like these, I'm putting my men on them as soon as they become available. And the two of you are the next available pair."

"Ms. Nonomiya and I are technically on break from our own investigation in Tokyo," Tatsumi supplied.

That was a new one to Hisoka. Tatsumi working in the field with an officer of Peacekeeping, and Peacekeeping working a Summons case. But then, crises had a way of tearing down traditional barriers and making them seem petty.

That didn't prevent Tatsumi from fulfilling his own duties as secretary either. "Here are the dossier for your summons and your budget," he said as he passed Hisoka and Natsume the appropriate paperwork. "You shouldn't need overnight accommodations for this operation. Your target has been in hospital for weeks waiting to die and isn't scheduled to be moved. Even with this new development. It seems her doctors want to keep her around for observations."

"You mean, for study," said Hisoka. Figure out just how she miraculously recovered from a terminal illness.

Tatsumi nodded. "That should give you plenty of time to get in and do what needs to be done."

"What about finding the cause? Doesn't Enma want us to get to the bottom of this?"

"Find out as much as you can," Konoe told him. "Any information you can gather could turn out to be the key to finally putting an end to these cases. But I don't expect you to find much. Whoever is doing this is an expert at covering their tracks."

* * *

Imai's first thought when he walked into the offices of the so-called Peacekeeping Division was that it wasn't so different from the office he shared with his old partner back at the Kumamoto Police Department. Though he supposed police and security headquarters must be pretty much the same anywhere you went.

With one major exception, of course: Everyone here was dead.

Including himself.

Or so they told him. Admittedly, that was a thought he was still getting used to. Sometimes it felt like a joke the people around here were trying to pull over on him, while at other times, he felt the full, undeniable weight of what had happened to him. But mostly he was just having a hard time believing there was really a place like this to go to after death, that felt familiar and even comfortable. It was too surreal.

"You know, I have to admit," said the woman who was showing him the ropes, a tall, athletic and no-nonsense broad who had introduced herself as Kazuma Shin. "So far you're taking this shinigami thing remarkably well for a new recruit."

So, maybe it was normal to feel traumatized by the whole ordeal. Though, so far, no crisis of faith had been forthcoming. Imai looked around himself at the definitely-material desks and filing cabinets, the coffee maker whose contents he could smell in his own nostrils, and wanted to tell Kazuma it was the believability of this place that made the transition easy.

Instead he said, "Yeah, well, my partner on the force believed in things like this. Aliens and conspiracies and vampires, shit like that. So I guess all his crazy kinda rubbed off on me after a while."

"Uh-huh." Kazuma snorted. "Which one of those do we fit into?"

"Er, sorry. I guess those probably aren't very politically correct terms around here," Imai said with a grimace. So far it didn't seem like he was making a real great first impression. "But I'm pretty sure I can cross out 'aliens' as a possibility."

"M-m, I wouldn't be so sure about that."

But by her wink, Imai guessed she was joking. Probably.

Then she sighed, and busied herself pouring a cup of coffee. "Guess it's my turn to say sorry," Kazuma said. "Joking about it probably isn't making this any easier. It isn't _respectful_ , I'm told. Of what you're going through. What you've lost."

Imai shrugged. "Doesn't bother me." Should it have, though? "I'm used to dark humor. Sometimes the only way you can keep your sanity when you're facing the worst humanity has to offer. You know?"

"Sure. I know. But you can cut the tough-guy detective routine, because we all have to go through it. Coming to terms with the fact that we're dead.

"Dead, but still alive, I suppose," she said in a low, wistful tone, almost more to herself than to him. Then she held out the cup. "Coffee? I should have asked, but you just didn't seem like the tea sort of guy. . . ."

"It's fine." He took the proffered cup. "And it's not being dead that bothers me. I mean, not when I see how _normal_ it really feels. It's not like I have anyone back home to cry over me, either. I guess I cared for that Asai kid more than I realized when I was alive, but better me than him when he's the one with a little kid at home, right? That is, if he _did_ survive. I can only hope. And, okay, so maybe I was just starting to think that me and the ex- had a chance at starting over—but to be honest, that was probably just wishful thinking on my part. . . ."

Sympathy he wasn't going to ask for. But it seemed he had it nonetheless. Kazuma's smile was full of understanding as she leaned back and folded her arms over her ample chest, and just listened. No one in his life had ever just shut up and _listened_ to him like he had anything worthwhile to say. Other than Asai, anyway—which, now that Imai thought about it, explained a lot about their relationship. It was different, but good-different.

"I mean it, though," Imai said. "Try to sell me on all this shinigami crap a year ago and I would have held you overnight for psych evaluation. It's kind of a relief in a way, to know there's something waiting for us after we die. Once you get past how impossible it is. I mean, I was raised on some Buddhism, but nothing this supernatural."

"You might not think it's such a relief after being here a few decades," said Kazuma. "But do your job well, and you could earn a pretty decent rebirth."

"Hey, anything I can get is fine by me. Uh, unless Hell is a real place too, that is. I thought for sure I was a goner when that bird-thing showed up—"

"You remember your death? Already?"

The newcomer to the conversation was a middle-aged man of tight, muscular build with a military haircut. He didn't need to introduce himself for Imai to know he was a figure of some authority in the department. The cocky smile on his face and the way he held himself spoke volumes. His register with Imai was one of a superior to an underling. "Usually those memories are blocked out for newly-minted shinigami. Save you the trauma of remembering your own death while you're experiencing the trauma of learning there's an afterlife. It would be like trying to be a child while remembering every second of your own birth."

"Detective, may I introduce Major Todoroki, chief of the Peacekeeping Division," Kazuma said while the other extended his hand to Imai.

"And you must be Imai Yuuto," said Todoroki. His handshake was firm, possessive. "I've been looking forward to making your acquaintance. As you'll probably hear soon enough if you haven't already, two of my best agents were recently, er, _retired_ rather unexpectedly. It will be good for office morale to see a new face around here, especially one with some actual experience in law enforcement."

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Imai admitted, "I don't remember that much of how I died, actually. It's more like, the basic facts are there. I could give you the rundown, but it wouldn't mean much for me personally. I haven't yet made the connection that would make it all make sense. If _that_ makes any sense. . . ."

Todoroki chuckled at that. "It'll all come back to you. Eventually. It always does. And when you find out what—or _who,_ as the case may be—was responsible for your death, you and I will have plenty to talk about."

A glance out of the corner of his eye showed Kazuma was none to pleased by those words, or the grin on her boss's face. Imai might have guessed something about the chief disgusted his erstwhile Beatrice—

But Todoroki's clapping him on the shoulder turned his attention to other matters. "For now, let's just make sure you're settling in nicely. Now, did I hear correctly you were with the Kumamoto PD in your old life? . . ."


	3. Empty inside

" _TSUZUKI-I-I-I!"_

 _No sooner does he hear Hisoka's voice calling his name than he can feel it: a pull behind his navel, an expanding inside. And—nononono, with the hole still gaping in his chest, his limbs turning to concrete, this is the last thing he needs. He tries to keep the power inside, but it's not his to control anymore, just an echo and he's along for the ride, knowing this can only end badly for all involved, but God, can even he be prepared for how quickly everything goes to hell. . . ._

 _Everything out of time, he looks up at Muraki standing above him. Frozen. Helpless. Can feel it in his head like it's his own thought, his own command—"Destroy that man." No. Not like this, Rikugou, not now. Don't do it. Listen to your master—damn it,_ _listen to me! __Stop this at once!_

 _STO-O-OP!_

 _The sunbird's eyes go wide in terror. His howl splits the very air apart. The flare stops in front of Tsuzuki like hitting a glass wall. He keeps waiting to be swallowed up in its flames, can feel their heat, but it's everything else that is, never him. It should be me! But no, it's Hisoka who's sucked into the ricochet's inferno, arms going up over his face as though they can hope to save him from the fire. He vanishes in light, but Tsuzuki can still hear him screaming—_

Muraki's cup connected with its saucer with a muted ring. "I've lost you again, haven't I? Even wiped off the face of the earth, it seems that boy commands your attention better than I ever could."

It seemed pointless to respond when Muraki already knew the answer, so Tsuzuki didn't. As though his existence this last month consisted of anything other than reliving that night, over and over again. The moment of Hisoka's death, the reminder that it was all Tsuzuki's fault. That he could have prevented it. If he hadn't ordered Rikugou to stop, he and Muraki would have been the only ones destroyed by the shiki's light, and Hisoka would still _be_.

If Tsuzuki had been a better master, Rikugou might never have agreed to obey Hisoka, and Hisoka would still exist.

If Tsuzuki had never run away from Meifu in the first place, forcing Hisoka to turn to Gensoukai in desperation—if he'd just been honest with Hisoka about what he was, what Muraki was to him, and damn his pride or the fallout, it's not like Hisoka would have been the first partner he pushed away—if he'd never gone to Muraki Yukitaka's clinic when he was eighteen, if he'd just thrown himself off a bridge instead, like countless other disillusioned youths in those days—

 _If! If! If!_ What good did they do him now? _This_ was his reality. Hisoka, gone! And nothing he ever did would change that.

"But I mustn't be selfish and complain. This process is good for you. It shouldn't be rushed. You need to feel the full weight of your loss, your culpability, before you can move on—"

"On to _what?_ What could possibly be left for me?"

His own voice shook Tsuzuki back to the present, and this farce of a tea party that Muraki insisted on staging for him day after day. Another memory of my time with the grandfather, Tsuzuki knew. A Taisho-era record played on the gramophone in the hall. The china was period-appropriate, as well as the tea inside it. Even the fucking doilies on the tables and the blanket on Tsuzuki's lap, that he was tucked into as though he were some sort of invalid—

 _What sick game is he playing at, invoking Yukitaka in everything?_

It hurt all the more that Tsuzuki found himself all but helpless. He could barely lift himself out of this chair by himself. How was he supposed to do anything about the view or the mood music in his state? The tea was drugged, he knew; and though he hated himself for it, he knew he would drink it just the same.

Muraki had been forthcoming about its contents from the beginning. An opioid to numb the pain that still troubled him: the physical pain of his injuries and the ache of his grief that constantly tore him apart like an ever-widening chasm. A not-so-mild sedative that would knock Tsuzuki out within an hour of ingesting it and give him a few more of dreamless sleep.

He should have minded. He would have even just a month ago. Indignant and troubled by thoughts of what Muraki might do to him while he was unconscious. But it was a relief to get a few hours of blessed nothingness, even if it did have to be under Muraki's roof. It was a few more hours in the day he wasn't confronted with what he had done. That was worth more than any physical torture Muraki might inflict.

"You aren't the only one who lost someone dear." Muraki's voice wouldn't let him wallow in his misery alone. "Lest you've forgotten, your recklessness nearly killed Ukyou—"

"But it didn't. Did it? At least she's still alive—"

"Yes, still alive! And taken to Hell by the Queen of Hell herself, subjected to who knows what ungodly torments! And you did nothing to stop it. No, you put her there. You put that abominable _thing_ in her—"

"No—that's enough—"

Tsuzuki wanted to cover his ears, but the effort was too much. He squeezed his eyes so tightly shut he thought his eyes might burst from the pressure. It was too much to hope that that might take the images from his mind.

That would have been too easy an out for Muraki's purposes. He shot to his feet, and kicked Tsuzuki's chair away from the table. His hand heavy on Tsuzuki's shoulder shook Tsuzuki's eyes open. "It's never enough," he muttered through his teeth, satisfied when his roughness brought a fresh upswell of tears to those wine-dark eyes. "I need you to _feel_ it, Tsuzuki—every single—little—bit of it—"

"You think I don't? You think I don't blame myself for _everything_ that's happened? Don't you think I would take it all back if I could? I would kill myself a thousand times over if I knew it would bring back a single one of them!"

How many had lost their lives because of him? Suffered because of him? And the ones he was guilty of failing to save, the Rukas, the Ukyous. The Mitanis—he could still see the young professor's face when he closed his eyes, the devil staring out of it as he carried Ukyou away—and Marikos, who were never supposed to die, but fell too quickly for him to reach. He remembered them all. Their smiles, their trust. Their innocent faces twisted in agony, because of him. They'd all believed in him, and he'd let them all down. Hastened their destruction. Hisoka was just one of an innumerable many.

But he was the last one. The only one whose loss Tsuzuki knew now he would actually survive, and didn't want to. What an idiot he was to have left Hisoka behind just because he was afraid to face the truth—afraid if he did, he'd lose Hisoka's trust. Now he'd lost him forever, without ever knowing if the truth would have kept them apart. How was that choice worth it?

 _I killed him. And now he's gone. I'll never see him again._

Something caved within Tsuzuki like rotten floorboards finally giving way, sending him plummeting down into darker depths of realization, of feeling, of despair, than he'd ever known were there. How was it even possible a person could withstand such pain? He wanted to tear out his own heart just to feel some relief. Tears rolled in a hot torrent down his cheeks, and he let them, hoping they would wash away some of this guilt, but knowing that they wouldn't. They were only the very least of what he deserved.

"This is good," Muraki's voice slithered low and soothing in his ear. Almost sorry, if Tsuzuki didn't know him better. "Now we are starting to make real progress."

He couldn't take this anymore. He needed the pain to stop. "I'll drink your poison, Muraki. Please. . . ." _I've had enough._

A teacup was placed gently in his hand. Tsuzuki drank the tepid contents as quickly as he was able, though he had to fight through the tightness in his throat to get it down. How long would he have to wait—forty minutes? forty-five?—before his one remaining friend, the numbness, started to set in?

As if reading his mind, Muraki said, in that same soothing tone, "It's just tea, Tsuzuki. Nothing more. You can't keep running away from what you've done. Now you need to own it. Become it."

The cup was flying out of Tsuzuki's hand before he even knew what he was doing. The agony inside him coalesced into a burst of rage, and the cup crashed against the wall.

Muraki got back to his feet, took a step back, _tsk_ ed when he saw the damage. "That was almost a hundred years old."

" _Why are you doing this to me?_ " Tsuzuki wailed at him. "What do you _want?_ You already have me here! Take me, tear me apart—do whatever it is you've always wanted to do to me! I don't _care_! _What are you waiting for?_ "

Wasn't this what he'd been wanting for years? For Tsuzuki to come begging to him to be violated, unable to resist? But throughout his outburst, Muraki only stared silently at the broken teacup, as if unsure whether to tell and reveal his hand.

"For you to shatter," he finally said, so matter-of-factly Tsuzuki was unsure for a moment if he had only imagined it. "Only then can we start to rebuild you into what you were always meant to be."

And then he calmly walked out, lifting the needle from the record along the way. Leaving Tsuzuki in the silence and solitude of his own guilt and self-loathing. Knowing full well there was no escaping from it.


	4. Craving life

The woman whose soul Hisoka and Natsume had been sent to take was angry when they explained who they were and why they were visiting her, and understandably so. A person in the last stages of a cancer that had metastasized throughout her body, who had to be on oxygen and strong painkillers and confined to bed until her vital systems finally shut down, then was given a second chance to live and feel better than she had even in her youth, naturally wasn't too keen on the idea of giving her new lease on life back again. No matter how unnatural a couple of strange young men tried to convince her it was.

Though her emotional energy told Hisoka otherwise, she refused to believe they were what they said they were, and threatened to have hospital security remove them if they didn't remove themselves.

It didn't help matters, either, that as the two shinigami were leaving, the patient's children were just arriving to visit her. Ecstatic, tears of joy in their eyes to see the mother they might have already said their formal goodbyes to sitting up in bed, the color back in her cheeks. Eating like a teenager. Such heart-breaking happiness and relief was unexpected in a hospital setting, in Hisoka's experience. He was used to feeling overwhelmed when he came to a place like this, but not in that way.

"Even if she does have the strength of a kicking mule," Natsume sighed as he sat down at their table in the hospital cafeteria, a bland-looking curry and rice on the tray in front of him, "she's still gotta sleep sometime. We can do it then."

"Much as I don't like taking a summons unaware," Hisoka mumbled into his palm, "I'm inclined to agree this time." By the time she realized what they'd done, it would be too late to do anything about it. She would already be halfway through Judgment. "But with her family here, even that isn't going to be easy."

With his other hand, he poked his own lasagne with a spork. It wasn't that the food was bad, necessarily; only having to eat his meals in a hospital, inundated with its particular emotional energy of fear and despair, wasn't doing his appetite any favors.

"This whole situation is messed up. Shinigami are supposed to take away pain, not cause it. We're supposed to bring death to people as a mercy, not drag them back down a hole they'd just managed to crawl out of."

"I hear you, Kurosaki. But these people didn't _earn_ a second chance at life. You can't think about it as they got better and we're robbing them of something that rightfully belongs to them. What's happened to them is _wrong._ It upsets the natural order. And whatever else shinigami do, first and foremost we correct errors."

Hisoka had to admit he had a point, albeit grudgingly. And he had to remind himself that while he was sitting in an infirmary bed with his feet (when they started to grow back) up, Natsume had already taken on a fair share of patients just like the one waiting for them upstairs. It wasn't right for Hisoka to start complaining now. Nor was it considerate to what surely must have been his partner's own struggles, even if Natsume was careful about allowing Hisoka to see them.

For a moment, he was struck by a sense of deja vu. He could remember having similar conversations with Tsuzuki, only the sides were almost always reversed: Tsuzuki, though by far the veteran, begging to allow their cases a little more time, while Hisoka, the rookie, had to remind him of the rules, and his duties. Though Hisoka wasn't about to offer their current case a last dance, he thought maybe he was beginning to understand.

 _This is how it starts. You tell yourself, Maybe I can just go easy on this one, and before you know it, you're reluctant to take_ anyone's _life. No matter how much they're suffering. . . ._

"I was thinking," Natsume said around a bite of curry. "I know Tatsumi and the chief said not to worry too much about finding out who's behind all this if no opportunity presents itself, but maybe we can stick around a little longer anyway, see if we can't scrounge up a clue or two on our own."

"All that about not investigating didn't sit well with me either." Hisoka was relieved that he didn't have to be the first one to mention it. He wouldn't want his coworkers to think he was trying to make up for all that time he was out recovering, even if that was exactly what he felt he needed to do.

On that note, he pushed his tray away. "I can't stop thinking about what our patient said—"

Natsume helped himself to Hisoka's toast. "About her guardian angel, dressed all in white?"

"Yeah. That. You know how many times I've heard Muraki described just that way?"

"Problem is, kid, we're in a hospital. I don't need to remind you that the place is full of angels in white. Plus, our patient's angel was a woman. She was certain of that."

"True. . . ."

"And all she knew for sure was that this angel was there when she woke up, holding her hand, and that she'd never seen her before then. That doesn't mean she was the one responsible for our lady's miraculous recovery. She could've just been the first doctor to walk by."

"Our patient wasn't the only one that reported seeing a similar person."

"Again: Hospital. Doctors. White coats. It's too anonymous a disguise, too generic."

"And I'm sure that's just the sort of anonymity someone who thinks like Muraki would bet on."

Natsume looked up at Hisoka through his glasses as he silently chewed. He didn't really believe it was a coincidence, either.

"What do you think the chances are that whoever's doing this is sticking close to their patients, waiting to see how they fare with the treatment?"

Natsume snapped his fingers. "You know, I've been wondering the same thing? I noticed that the longer it's taken us to get to our summons and take their souls, the more grouped together they are in a certain geographical area. And it got me thinking, what if _we're_ the ones scaring this angel in white away? What if they're only changing their hunting grounds, so to speak, because the patients they save start dying?"

What Hisoka had meant was that perhaps there was a way the culprit could be drawn back to their patient, like with media coverage or a complication that would be impossible for him or her to ignore. But on second thought, those things might spook their serial savior even more than the loss of another patient who was most likely going to die anyway. "That's actually not a bad theory."

 _Shouldn't I have noticed that pattern? Am I slipping?_ Hisoka mentally reviewed what he remembered from the other files. He would have to have them in front of him to be sure, but it seemed Natsume's theory had some merit.

"So, if that's the case, and this is the first instance of our angel showing up in Wakayama—"

"Then we just have to hold off on our summons long enough for him or her to show up and save another life!" said Natsume, wide-eyed and beaming behind his glasses. "There's gotta be more than one patient in this city undergoing treatment for a terminal disease. If we could try to guess ahead of time who the next target is going to be—"

"You think maybe we could catch them in the act of curing another patient."

"I can compile a list of all the patients that would fit our target's profile, staying in hospitals in the Wakayama area. See if there are any that jump out as too good for our angel in white to pass up."

"It's worth a shot," said Hisoka, though it sounded like a formidable task. Surely there were more than just a handful of people who fit those criteria. "Better than always being a step behind, anyway. I'll catch Tatsumi and the chief up on our plans."

"And, Kurosaki? Why don't you get yourself some fresh air while you're at it."

"Hm?" Hisoka looked up, realizing he had been staring at his barely-touched lasagna. Was it obvious how distracted his thoughts had been since returning to work? For all he tried to focus . . .

"You look a little green," Natsume helpfully supplied. "I know you're probably still recovering from your injuries, and I just want you to know it's okay to take it slow your first case back. That's why we have partners, after all. You can't expect to do it all yourself."

* * *

K's mrowl summoned Natsume back to the computer. He scratched her head as he peered at screen: lists of the names of patients, what they were in for, and where they were being treated. "Nice job, K-kun! There's some extra tuna in it for you tonight for doing this."

If only she could operate a can opener as well as a computer keyboard, K thought. Then there would be extra tuna every night.

"What do you say we try to refine this search before we bring Kurosaki in on it. I want terminal patients only, in order of when they were admitted if you don't mind. I'll see if the Gushoushin can't cross-reference them with the Kiseki's list of expected. Maybe a name or two will shake out."

With an ear twitch of affirmation, K got right on that. What were partners for after all?

* * *

"Alright," Tatsumi said after a long moment of thought, after Hisoka had told him about his and Natsume's plan. "I'll tell the chief that I've given you two another day to let your patient put her affairs in order. But I want you to call immediately if it seems our culprit is still in the area. We don't know who or what we're dealing with, but I don't want the two of you to have to handle it alone."

"Understood," Hisoka said. And let out his breath. He hadn't expected Tatsumi to agree so readily, but the rest of Summons had to be tired of cases like these.

That and the new Tatsumi, Hisoka noticed, the one who had been chief, was quite a bit more trusting of Hisoka's judgment than he had ever been when Tsuzuki was around.

"One more thing, Kurosaki. Natsume is already aware of this, but in case he forgets, would you make sure to get a sample of your summons' blood or tissue before you finish? Hair will also work, I'm told, but it needs to have the root intact. Watari has taken it upon himself to do a cross-analysis of all our related cases, to see if he can narrow down whatever drug they may have received in common."

"Sure thing. Has he found anything yet?"

"Other than some 'fascinating new compounds' . . .?" Tatsumi's sigh was heavy over the phone. Hisoka didn't need to read his mind to know he was dreading how those compounds might "accidentally" make their way into the morning coffee, or a box of donuts. All in the name of science, of course. "Nothing useful, I'm afraid. But every sample helps us get a better sense of the big picture."

When he disconnected, Hisoka took the opportunity to breathe in deep the May evening air. The leaves in the trees were rustling with what little breeze there was in the heavy late-spring dampness, a few kids playing on a slide and swing set in the last hours of daylight.

Most importantly for Hisoka's needs, the spirit of the park was quiet. Such a contrast to the air inside the hospital, where it felt like everyone was screaming in his head and he couldn't hear himself think. There was a time when he'd almost stopped noticing it. Or rather, when he had been able to block most of it out. His and Tsuzuki's cases took them to hospitals and other end-of-life care-giving facilities often enough that his fear of them had managed to fade to a mildly annoying anxiety.

Now he couldn't seem to concentrate enough to block it all out. Like he was starting over as a shinigami. _What's wrong with me?_

But he knew what was wrong. And it wasn't his injuries—though his toes growing back did start to tingle maddeningly when he wasn't focused on the case.

The way it seemed to take more of a conscious effort to absorb what he read in the case files, how the very act of sitting still was almost unbearable and filled him with guilt that any time spent relaxing was coming at someone else's expense. The feeling he got when he was around anyone from the office, like they felt they had to walk on eggshells around him. . . .

He had had dreams where he went to work having forgotten his clothes. Everyone had them, he supposed. It felt the same when he'd stepped into the office after being gone a month in recovery. Not like he was naked, but like everyone knew there was something wrong with him, and that worried them. Like they could tell somehow that he was no longer the same Hisoka they knew, even though he didn't feel all that different. He was different to them, and that was enough to make him feel ashamed.

All the more reason to put a little extra effort into his current case. He'd already fallen far behind everyone else in Summons; he owed it to them. At least Natsume had a decent plan for ending this "angel in white" debacle. Even if Hisoka hadn't been the one to think of it, he could make sure he supported his partner and saw the plan to fruition.

* * *

The call came in sooner than expected, in the early hours of the next morning. From the Castle of Candles. Their suspect had struck again—an awful way of saying another life had been saved from certain death, but in this line of work, there were plenty things worse than death.

The hospital was a private one on the other side of Wakayama. A patient with ALS so far advanced that he needed a respirator, had sat himself up in the middle of the night, and started talking to the nurses. With great difficulty, but improving every minute. Doctors were at a loss to explain it. They said it was a miracle. Theirs was a Catholic hospital, so miracles were at least something many of them believed possible.

The shinigami were of a somewhat different opinion. And this time they were quick to arrive, while the patient's memory was fresh.

"I was awake when she came in," he told Natsume, who for all he knew was just another doctor in a white coat, eager to see the miracle for himself. "I don't think she knew. I couldn't talk or move because of the disease."

Natsume shot Hisoka, who was pretending to be a high school volunteer, a look as if to say, _Got her._ "Did you see her face?"

But the man shook his head. "Not really. She didn't turn on the lights. Just did something to my drip. A few hours later, I have control of my body again. I can't tell you how amazing it feels! Hey, do you think I could meet the woman who saved my life? Thank her in person?"

"We would love nothing more than to get the two of you back together in this room," said Natsume, "believe me, but we don't even know who she is. And if you can't identify her either . . ."

"There was one thing that stood out," the man suddenly remembered. "She was wearing one of those clip-on badges. I couldn't make out her name, but there was a logo. Corporate. Looked like a cherry blossom. . . ."

Hisoka's heart leaped. He sketched something quickly on the clipboard he was carrying, and showed it to the man. "Like this?"

"Yes!" He brightened. "That was it for sure. I could never forget that logo now if I tried. It saved my life."

Hisoka hated to inform him, then, that he was actually doomed. That could wait. They asked the man a few more questions, but none of his answers were as helpful as that logo; and Hisoka could feel Natsume's impatience to ask him about it the whole time.

Only after they had left the patient to his own doctors did it come out. "Something you want to share, Kurosaki?"

Hisoka turned the clipboard to him. "It's the logo of Sakuraiji Pharmaceuticals."

"Wait. The same Sakuraiji whose house everything went down at a month ago? Wasn't she engaged to Muraki, too? You think she's involved in all this?"

"I don't know." Hisoka shook his head. "Last I heard, Sakuraiji Ukyou went missing after . . ." _After my shiki exploded and destroyed her house._ "You know. I checked the first opportunity I got to see if her soul had made it to Meifu, but the Gushoushin assured me there was no record of us having received it. Or that it was expected."

"So she could be on the lam," Natsume muttered. "On the run from us _and_ Muraki. But if that's the case, why would she risk getting herself caught by doing something as bold as curing people on their deathbeds?"

"We don't have any proof it's Sakuraiji herself. Could be someone who works for her. It's a big company."

And an interesting coincidence, Hisoka thought, that the same flower that bloomed forever in the land of the dead should be associated, in the form of this pharmaceutical company, with immortality in the living world too. Wasn't it supposed to be, according to all the poems, the exact opposite?

"I'll check the sign-in sheets," Natsume said with a nod. "We can check the other hospital's when we go back for our summons. Whoever our angel is, unless they teleported in they would have had to get by the nurses' desk first. And if they were wearing a pharmaceutical company badge, there's a good chance they were actually here on some official business."

"At least that should give us some idea of who's behind all this. As for the what and how, I think we'll find everything we need to answer those at the Sakuraiji labs."

But first, they had two perfectly healthy and perfectly doomed souls to take.

* * *

Zepar stretched like a cat, luxuriating in the feel of the enormous bed beneath him, the cool of the sheets against his naked body, the guiltlessness of knowing there was nowhere else he needed to be.

It was good to be king. But even better to be the king's confidante.

"So, the _grande odalisque_ deigns to rejoin the world of the awake."

He nearly jumped and covered himself at the sarcastic male voice; but that would have been taken as a sign of weakness, and unbecoming. _Fuck it: Let him stare._ It was not as though Zepar was ashamed of his beauty.

"Lord Paimon," he purred as he rolled over to face the intruder, pouring every ounce of his disgust into his sweet tones, "you could have knocked. Or was it the promise of catching a glimpse of yours truly in all his natural glory that makes you sneak around so?"

The other laughed, a deep, rich sound. "I don't have to sneak around for that, as everyone in Pandemonium knows. They only have to poke holes in your glamour, and they see more of you than anyone in their right mind would want to."

A jab at Zepar's recent run-ins with shinigami, and being temporarily incapable of changing his shape. Even Zepar wasn't fond of the flayed, winged default version of himself that lay underneath the glamour, but he wasn't about to admit that to another being. Not even Ashtaroth—who, after all, was rather more fond of his more human iterations.

"And it's _King_ Paimon," said his tormentor. "Or has her highness convinced you that I've already been usurped?"

"Now I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

Zepar sat up, crossing his legs in a Buddha pose as he turned to face the demon king. Paimon had always inspired a touch of revulsion in him. Though he resembled some unholy offspring of a macaque and a man, like a living version of Sun Wukong complete with crown and prehensile tail, there was surprising strength in his lithe body, and an androgynous beauty to his beastly face that just seemed unnatural to Zepar. It didn't seem right, that a walking abomination should be as captivating and as commanding as that.

Yet there was a reason Paimon was king, and not Zepar.

At Zepar's loss for a response, the youthful king smirked, and leaned against a pillar. "I know half of Hell thinks I'm a simpleton, but I'm not so daft as to miss it when Ashtaroth and her minions are plotting. Nor am I deaf. And she makes no secret of the fact that she's grown tired of seeing my face."

"You interrupted my beauty sleep just to tell me you figured it all out?" Zepar snorted back. "Or are you expecting me to relay the message?"

"Relay all you want, I'm sure she already knows I know. That's part of the game, isn't it? The mouse knows he's fucked. It's just a matter of whether he can kill the cat before it kills him first."

 _So, it's to be war after all, is it?_ Zepar had never taken a very good look at Paimon in the past; but now as he looked in his eyes, he saw how wrong he was all these millennia to just assume Paimon was a fool. But, oh, Paimon was just as culpable: He had played that part so well.

Feeling a chill at his back, Zepar said, "What do you intend to do?"

Paimon smiled. "As if I would tell you my plans. Or, if I did, as if I would be truthful. No, Zepar, your first instinct was more on the nail. I just had to see what new plaything the Lady had taken for herself."

"Why, you almost sound jealous, _my king_. But then, I guess it's no secret she never liked you. How many millennia have you been co-rulers of this place? I imagine it must stick in your simian craw to see an upstart like me sharing her bed."

"My good duke," said Paimon, "I think you do confuse jealousy with pity. You do know the Lady Ishtar has broken everyone and everything she ever loved, don't you? She loved a shepherd once, but grew bored of him and turned him into a wolf, to be forever hunted by his peers. She loved the wildness of horses, and broke them with the whip and saddle. And I suppose you've heard of Tammuz. I do believe it's his form you've taken. Or, one assumes, what the Lady believes she remembers of it."

"She told me about her husband," Zepar said, feigning boredom. "How she went to the Land of the Dead to ransom him when he was abducted by the goddess of death."

"And did she also tell you that when she finally returned, after being tortured by her sister, after dying a thousand deaths for him, it was Tammuz she found sitting on her throne, ruling in her place? Did she also tell you what she did to him in her rage?"

"So King Ashtaroth doesn't like usurpers. Who does?"

"It's always those traits that remind us most of ourselves that we despise the most in others."

Zepar felt the weight of the accusation in Paimon's unblinking stare as much as his words. But the devil king's fate was sealed. Nothing Zepar said to his mistress would change it. Nor did he want to. After this, he wanted Paimon dead more than he ever had before.

"Well," he said, "luckily for me, I have no intention of betraying my lady's wishes."

Paimon laughed. "Then you're a bigger fool than I previously thought. So, no, I don't envy you your newfound favor. I just hope I'm still around to witness the spectacle when she grows bored with you. And I'm betting that will happen right around the time that child she desires so badly is born.

"After all," his voice seemed to echo about the bedchamber as he slipped away, "you're just a placeholder. It's another Tsuzuki Asato she wants, and you, Zepar, are not and will never be he."

* * *

Ukyou should have known it was too good to be true when her captors left her unguarded and her room unlocked.

She had thought to make her escape—to find a way out of this nightmare and back to a part of the world that looked familiar to her, where she might have a chance at calling for help.

But the compound, or whatever she ought to call the cyclopean structure she was stuck in, was a maze, one that shifted around her in impossible non-Euclidean configurations that left her feeling as though she were trapped in a fever dream. As though this world itself defied everything she thought she knew about the laws of physics.

Her old self would have convinced her she was experiencing an hallucination. Now that she knew things like shinigami and demons existed, however, and had seen them work miraculous feats with her own eyes, when some terrifying bipedal creature with the head of a schnauzer and claws like an iguana told her she was in Hell, she felt inclined to believe it.

That didn't mean she had to want to stay here, though.

Unfortunately, the longer she stayed lost, the more lost she became. Maybe there was no way out, no door through which she could simply slip back into her own world. She might as well be on another planet. The very thought that she was breathing in some alien atmosphere was enough that she could feel herself slipping into the beginnings of a panic attack. She hadn't felt this overwhelmed since exam time in college, though even that she would have traded for this any day, a thousand times over.

Then, what little luck she still had ran out. She heard voices—speaking a strange and horrible language she couldn't begin to understand, but she was sure they were talking about her. They must have discovered her missing. They must be coming for her.

She dashed toward the next corner, hoping to find a place to hide—and almost collided with the two hulking demons in armor just around it. They hadn't been behind her after all.

Ukyou stumbled back against the wall. The demons, just as surprised as she was, laughed. "Well, speak of the human and she appears! Nice of the little runaway to come running back to us."

 _Are they speaking Japanese?_ Weird that she would be able to understand them, when they were twice as tall as her, with voices like truck engines.

"What do you suppose she's doing all the way out here?" said the one that looked like a bipedal snapping turtle. "Not trying to escape, are we? Is that any way to repay your hosts?"

"Better return her, before word gets to the top she's flown her coop," said the other, a very large, muscular aye-aye with torn bat wings sprouting from his back. Before she could draw away, he grabbed her arm in his long-fingered hands, the cracked nails digging through her sleeves and into her flesh as he tried to yank her to him. "Don't mean we can't have a little fun first, though."

 _No!_ Ukyou screamed. She dug in her heels and tried to pull away from the demon's grasp, but he held her tight, her struggle only seeming to make him and his companion laugh harder. Just like that night after the festival, all over again. Those men who seemed to have been waiting for her, the promise of violation in their eyes and in their heartless grins. . . .

Only Kazutaka and Oriya weren't here to save her. No one was. No one cared. And she couldn't be sure she would even survive what these two monsters planned to do to her. . . .

"Release the woman _—_ _NOW!"_

The aye-aye hand around her arm relaxed its hold, and the two demons shrank back from the voice that had given the command, eyes lowering to the ground. "We—we didn't mean any harm, milord. Just a bit of light torture—"

"'A bit of light torture'? Just what do you imbeciles think the definition of 'harm' is? And when I tell you to release her, I expect you _to release her._ _So do it!_ "

The grip on her arm went away, and Ukyou's knees gave out in shock when she tried to move away from her would-be attackers. When she had managed to steady herself, she looked up at her savior, and immediately wished that she hadn't.

He might have been pleasant-looking once, with a gentle and rather youthful face, and shaggy hair held back in a ponytail that had gone white. But the pallor of his skin was one of death and decay, the color of flesh that had been sitting in water for far too long; his eyes were cloudy; and he had a ragged gash on one cheek that was putrid. As if that weren't nauseating enough, the smell of decaying kelp and fish that wafted from his direction made her want to gag.

Still, the demons who until a moment ago had been sure to hurt her obeyed and were afraid of him. Even though he was half the size of each.

"Have you two any idea who this mortal is?" There was power in his voice, though the body that produced it was weak. It was the sort of voice that could not only threaten, but follow up on its threats—the sort of voice one didn't test. "Have you any idea what she carries—how _valuable_ she is to Lord Ashtaroth? Why do you think it was ordered that she remain inviolate? And yet here you two were, about to damage more than just the hairs on her head—"

"Thank evilness you were here to stop us in time, Lord Focalor!" said the aye-aye. "As you can clearly see, not a hair is out of place, heh-heh. . . ."

He mimed smoothing Ukyou's hair, but to her relief did not actually touch her again. It seemed he was afraid to in this Focalor's presence.

"I don't suppose we can all forget this ever happened, milord?" said the snapping turtle.

"That depends," said Focalor, pinching the bridge of his nose. "If _anything_ untoward should happen to this woman while she is here with us, I don't care who's responsible, I will make sure the two of you are the first to feel Lord Ashtaroth's wrath. So I guess it's in your best interests to make sure she is well taken care of from now on, is it not?"

To Ukyou's surprise, her attackers shrank back and muttered nervously between themselves at the mere threat. She could only guess that his Ashtaroth character's punishments were legendary, since the two demons seemed big and thick enough to take a lot of blows without flinching. "Of course, Lord Focalor!" "Took the words right out of my brain, milord!" they said as they bowed repeatedly and made a hasty retreat.

Leaving Ukyou alone with the decaying man. She shied away.

For a moment the man looked hurt by it. But he could not have been ignorant of his looks, or his smell. "You don't remember me, do you?" he said. His voice was cold, but not cruel.

"Should I?"

"I brought you to this place. It was I who made sure you were afforded the proper comforts. You should have stayed where I put you."

"In that cell?" The thought that that man had touched her, held her, done who knew what to her while she was unconscious, was almost more than she could bear without slipping into an anxiety attack. It wasn't that she was afraid of dead flesh either; she would never have been able to do the job she did if that frightened her. But there was something very, very wrong with flesh as long past dead as his walking and talking.

"That _cell_ ," Focalor said through his teeth, "is for your own safety. There are those in this place that wish you harm, simply for the blow your demise could deal to their enemy. You carry something priceless to the one I serve. I have been charged with making sure both of you meet with no evil while you are here."

Ukyou's hand went to her belly before she could catch herself doing it. She curled it into a fist instead. What were the chances the first gesture would escape Focalor's notice? "Is that why you're being kind to me?"

"Kind?" The thought hadn't even crossed Focalor's mind. Certainly he wished the mortal woman no ill will, but perhaps in light of his countrymen's behavior, his own seemed downright gentlemanly in comparison. "It is in my interest to keep you alive, Dr. Sakuraiji." He held out his hand to her. "Just as it is in yours to accompany me back to your room. Don't take it more personally than that."

Ukyou stared at his hand. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with it, other than its stark whiteness. She could guess it must be as cold as marble. "I can walk on my own without any help, thank you."

Focalor wasn't sure he believed her.

And neither was Ukyou the first few seconds after she pushed off of the wall. Her legs were still shaky from the adrenaline; but as she refused to let the decaying man touch her, if she could at all avoid it, she would make them work.

Focalor regarded her first few shaky steps skeptically, but he decided he would respect her wishes. It was no matter to him one way or the other, so long as he got her back in one piece. He only hoped he would not have to carry her again. Her weight, slight though it may have been, taxed this corpse of a vessel to its limits.

"You really ought to be more careful," he warned her as he followed at her elbow. "You cannot fathom the preciousness of what you carry, how many millions' hopes rest on that child. If you understood what a great honor has been bestowed upon you, you would know to stay where I put you. Where you can be protected."

Ukyou stared up at him in disbelief. "What part of any of this is an honor?"

She couldn't be sure the grin he flashed her in response was one of genuine sympathy, or sadistic glee. Only that she liked him better when he didn't smile at all. "It isn't every day one is chosen to be the mother of the Savior, Doctor."


	5. Already dead

Once Tsuzuki was well enough to explore his prison, he discovered that the place Muraki had described as a "sanctuary" consisted of about a dozen rooms connected by a U-shaped hallway, including a bathroom and kitchen, and all appointed in a style that harkened back to the Taisho: a quaint, almost clinical mix of traditional Japanese and European country. He couldn't be sure if that was simply an era that spoke to Muraki, or if it was done intentionally, for Tsuzuki's sake, but it reminded him at every turn of a time in his life that he would rather have been allowed to forget.

There were windows, but they didn't work the way windows should. When he looked through them, Tsuzuki could see nothing but bright sunlight or starless black, and that was his only indication of the time of day. Nor could any sound from outside that might give him a sense of where he was penetrate that glass.

They didn't open. Tsuzuki knew that because he tried everything including breaking their panes as soon as his strength began to return. Ended up breaking a chair instead. Neither did Tsuzuki know what might have happened had he succeeded. The apartment could be on another planet for all he knew, or another universe altogether, those windows all that stood between him and a toxic atmosphere, or no atmosphere at all.

He couldn't teleport out of the place, either, though God knew he tried. But Muraki was well-versed enough in spells and wards that it would have been simple work for him to ring the apartment in them, make it into some sort of spiritual safe only he could move in and out of.

And then there were the dolls in every room. Porcelain-faced, blank expressions, and more often than not Victorian-dressed, sometimes so innocuously placed that Tsuzuki could fool himself into forgetting they were there. For a time.

They made his skin crawl. They always had, ever since Muraki had shared his little hobby—obsession?—with him in Nagasaki. Tsuzuki tried not to be a judgmental person, but he had never been able to shake the feeling that there was something wrong with a grown man being so enamored with dolls. Or maybe it was just that said grown man was Muraki.

And it was just one more thing that made Tsuzuki feel like he was in some elaborate joke, some satire of his own existence. Each day Muraki tried to engage him with tea and a small meal—usually something baked and sweet—always served on fine china (though Muraki had switched out the hundred-year-old antiques with more recent facsimiles, Tsuzuki noticed). As though Tsuzuki were his imaginary friend at a little girl's tea party, who had to be bribed to eat and drink with sweets and a smile.

When in fact it was simply hunger that did the trick. His strength was returning with each day, his cells craving fuel as they doggedly repaired themselves. Tsuzuki's stomach wore down his will, even though it was not essential to his existence to eat, and though he hated himself for giving in to every bite.

He didn't worry whether the food was laced with drugs. Muraki had stuck by his word when he said Tsuzuki didn't need them anymore. Besides, if he were going to do something to Tsuzuki, who would stop him from doing it? The fact he hadn't made the slightest attempt to tie Tsuzuki up or down or anything in between showed a curious amount of trust in him. Trust enough to leave him the run of the place for long stretches of time. He must know I'd search every inch of this place for a way out the moment he turned his back, Tsuzuki thought, which can only mean there isn't one to find.

 _Not that there's anything for me to go back to._

And that was what it all boiled down to, wasn't it? Muraki could afford to leave him alone here because he knew full well there were no exits. No hope for escape. But more than that: not even a reason to try.

* * *

Blood as dark as wine poured out onto the floor as though from a tipped glass. It became a lake whose rising waters rushed to drown him in their darkness. Was there ever a more beautiful sight?

He'd done it right this time, opening the veins deep down the length of his forearm. A piece of broken glass did the trick—jagged but sharp as a razor on one end, and one end was all he needed. He hardly felt the pain anymore. Very soon. Very soon he would be gone from this place, this horrid clinic with its horrid airs and horrid memories. The sounds of it were already starting to fade from his ears. Soon he would be joining those butterflies outside his window.

The dream had been a brutally vivid one. He was back at the Summons office in Meifu, surrounded by his friends and colleagues. Even Ruka had been there—or was it Ukyou?; their faces shifted from one to the other in his mind—and partners from decades past whom he'd thought he had forgotten.

He'd slaughtered them all. But in the terrible logic of dreams, of course, they refused to stay dead. He tried to get away, but no matter where he ran, he couldn't seem to get out of the building. They always managed to find him, their mutilated bodies, blood-stained faces—they cornered him, berated him, blamed him, and he knew they were right, every word. He could only love them and hate himself more for it. Hisoka caught him. His accusations beat on Tsuzuki's heart like a cleaver, until he woke up wanting to die.

Only to find himself trapped once again in that clinic. Another nightmare he couldn't get out of.

No, that wasn't right. There were no butterflies outside the window here. There was nothing. The only butterflies were in his mind. Or in a song carved in a record. . . .

 _That's right._ His right hand clutched—not glass—a jagged slice of black vinyl, sticky with blood. The silence was because of this. He had killed the record. When he couldn't stand those butterflies a second longer.

He wasn't dying, either. While he watched, the torn vessels reconnected themselves, the deep valley of flesh slowly mending like geologic forces in rewind. The blood stopped flowing, like turning off a tap.

And the arms that came to him, that willfully picked him up off the floor, were not Yukitaka's. That man was long dead. The cool fingers that brushed his hair back from his face, that started undoing the buttons of his shirt—he knew them. Was repulsed by them. And, despite himself, welcomed the contact. The kindness in that touch, even if he knew better than to trust it.

"This has to end, Tsuzuki," Muraki told him, his voice as soothing and seductive as his fingers were methodical. "You must know these repeated attempts to end your life won't do you any good. You will not kill what's already dead."

"If it won't do me any good, then why don't you just leave me to it?"

Tsuzuki didn't resist as the half-unbuttoned shirt was lifted over his head. His skin stung where the blood stains that had stuck to it as they dried were ripped away, but he relished the irritation. He wished the damp cloth, pressing warm against his face and neck as Muraki started to wipe away his blood, didn't feel as good as it did. Wished he didn't want to lean into it as much as he did.

"Don't misunderstand me," Muraki murmured in time with brushes of the cloth. "It's not that I want to relieve you of your pain. You've always been most beautiful to me when you were hurting."

"So you're a sadist," Tsuzuki croaked. "Tell me something I don't already know."

Muraki breathed a long, yet patient, sigh. "I don't expect you to share the sentiment. After all, this, here, is the Tsuzuki I fell in love with. From the moment I first saw your face I was moved by your suffering in a way that nothing else since has had the power to move me. I suppose it's the closest I've ever come to true religion. This exquisite body, by holding such pain inside it, transcends its own material beauty and commands veneration. Even after all you've done, for all I should despise you, I can't help but fall to my knees at your altar."

It seemed to Tsuzuki, however, that what Muraki described was the furthest from what any sane person would call religion. For all his protestations that he was a mere worshipper, Muraki would never be content to possess him like a lepidopterist possesses a specimen, locked away under glass, preserved, immaculate. He had confessed as much not long after their first meeting, how merely seeing Tsuzuki would not be enough. Touching him would not be enough. He was an addiction to the doctor, and Muraki seeking an ever greater high.

His thumb traced over the lines on the inside of Tsuzuki's wrist as he turned it toward himself, and the softness of the damp cloth nevertheless felt like sandpaper on Tsuzuki's self-inflicted wound, still in the process of stitching itself back up. Tsuzuki winced. And when Muraki raised Tsuzuki's wrist to his lips, he looked poised to take a bite. Surely he must have felt Tsuzuki's pulse race beneath his thumb, the tantalizing beating of blood as strong as in life just beneath the surface.

But no bite came. Just the heavy warmth of Muraki's exhalation across his old scars, and the softest caress of his lips.

"I want this pain, Tsuzuki," he said, as though speaking to those scars themselves. "I need it. _You_ need it, whether you understand that or not. But not like this."

"Why not? Tired of me racking up your dry-cleaning bill?" But Tsuzuki was in no mood for jokes, and neither was his host.

"As much as I enjoy picking you up and dusting you off after every little breakdown, this obsession you have with self-mutilation is nothing but a grand and ultimately useless gesture. I think that, deep down, you know that. It served its purpose once, but you've outgrown it. You only continue to cling to it because it's easier than facing the truth."

Tsuzuki tried to force a laugh, to show Muraki how ridiculous he found that accusation, but a grimace slipped into its place unbidden. Tears flooded his eyes before he was aware they were coming, and with them came a sudden shame that he could do nothing to keep Muraki from seeing him this way. Sobbing like a spoiled child. Only instead of a toy having been taken away, his suicide. The one thing Tsuzuki had thought still belonged to him and himself alone. When, in truth, he'd lost it long ago.

Muraki shushed him even as he reached out to gather those tears in his palm. He seemed to understand better than he had any right to when he murmured: "I promise you, I will see you covered in blood before this is over. It just won't be yours."

The same lips that had so tenderly kissed his wrist curved into a sad and cruel smile, and Tsuzuki jerked away from Muraki's hand. This kindness was an act. He couldn't trust it. Muraki understood nothing. He never had. "I won't kill for you," Tsuzuki managed past the lump in his throat. "No matter what you do to me. I've already lost everything you could possibly take."

Just saying those words aloud were enough to make him feel as though he were on the bottom of an ocean of guilt, crushed by the sheer weight of his sins so that even the simplest movements took enormous effort. He would have been content to simply lie there, drowning for an eternity, and resented Muraki all the more for rousing him from his solitude, dragging him back to the surface and making him breathe. Beyond that, he would not force Tsuzuki to cooperate. "You have no more power over me."

Those silver eyes, staring back at him as cold and silent as the moon, seemed to believe otherwise.

But to Tsuzuki's surprise, Muraki let the matter drop there.

"You're a mess," he said as he got back to his feet, draping Tsuzuki's soiled shirt over his arm. His tone, jarringly matter-of-fact, as though the previous conversation had never taken place. "I'll draw you a bath, if you think you can refrain from opening a vein long enough to clean yourself up."


	6. Begging mercy

There was no Sakuraiji Ukyou in the visitor logs for either Wakayama hospital.

But there was a Dr. Akiyama representing the same company, down in the logs at both places for a drug consultation. There wasn't a complete record of sign-ins from related cases, but in the few that had been deemed relevant enough to be included with their files, Akiyama's name was present there as well.

"You didn't tell the Gushoushin where we were, did you?" Hisoka asked when Natsume relayed him the findings from his cell phone's e-mail.

"No. You asked me not to." Natsume's eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "Which I'm still not sure is a great idea. Didn't you say Tatsumi wanted us to have backup if we did something like this?"

"We'll call it in if and when we actually find something that may be useful," Hisoka told him. But even he wasn't sure where this urge to sneak around under his colleagues' noses arose from. I have to make up for my time gone, he told himself; but that didn't fully explain it.

They had snuck by the guards at the front desk of Sakuraiji Pharmaceuticals' main lab in Tokyo, deploying invisibility. The floor that housed Ukyou's office and those of her team was empty and dark when they arrived—perhaps with their boss absent, no one felt motivated enough to stay and burn the midnight oil—only the animals in their cages making noise when the shinigamis' flashlight beams fell across them.

They found Akiyama's office. There were cabinets sparsely filled with files, some reference books and awards on the shelves, two potted orchids and a hot-water dispenser for tea, but surprisingly little beyond that. Even her desk drawers had been cleaned out of everything but pens and notepads, as if she were getting ready to move to a different office. _Or actively trying to hide something._ "The workings of a paranoid mind," Natsume said half to himself as he checked one of the orchids for hidden microphones. But to Hisoka, it reeked more of healthy caution.

He tried the door of Sakuraiji's office. "Locked." But a simple charm was enough to fix that.

The place was an organized mess of paperwork and equipment. About what one might expect if its occupant had been gone for a month. Yet someone was clearly coming by regularly. The rabbits in cages along one wall were being fed and watered. The printouts on the tops of the stacks showed dates within the last month— _after_ Ukyou's disappearance. "What are the chances Akiyama has the key to this office?" Hisoka said as he tried to make sense of some of the data.

The light of a small refrigerator unit flooded the room from behind him.

"Whoa," said Natsume as he bent over it. "I think we found what we were looking for."

Inside were boxes stacked on top of boxes full of small vials, not unlike those containing vaccine. "Careful!" Hisoka hissed as Natsume removed one of the boxes, picking up one of the vials inside with the corner of a handkerchief.

His partner chuckled. "Relax. It's not like it's radioactive. . . . I think." Though he put it back quickly enough, just to be on the safe side.

The alphanumerical label on the side meant nothing to Hisoka, though he had to agree with his partner when Natsume said, "Watari would be able to make sense of this. He'd be able to tell us if this is the substance that revived our summons."

Hisoka nodded back towards the heaping desk. "The charts back there have some of the earlier cases' names and medical history on them." He sighed. "I should have put the pieces together sooner. The count told me a month ago that this company was specifically researching treatment for cancer and degenerative disease—exactly the things our cases were cured of. If we'd looked into this company then, we could have saved a lot of people a lot of suffering."

"Yeah. They would have just died of their horrible diseases, like they were going to anyway."

Hisoka couldn't tell if Natsume was being sarcastic because he disagreed with Hisoka's assessment, or because he felt the same way. Not that it made a difference. It hardly seemed like there was a right answer to be found in this whole affair. No matter what they did, those souls who had been slated for death couldn't change their fate.

"I wouldn't beat myself up over it, if I were you," Natsume said in a gentler tone when he got no response. "You couldn't be expected to remember something as minor as that after everything that happened. But we're here now, and we can put an end to this. That's all that matters." Natsume reached for his cell phone, flipping it open against his hip. "We need to call this in."

Hisoka turned back to the files, sure he was just going to dial Tatsumi or Chief Konoe. But when Natsume said, "Hey, Nonomiya, I need to get in contact with your old boss over a situation in Chijou that needs cleaning up," Hisoka flipped.

He grabbed Natsume by the arm, as though pulling the phone away from his partner's face might recall the order. "Are you nuts? We _can't_ call Peacekeeping!"

"Because they're the enemy? We have to stop thinking like that, Kurosaki." Natsume rested the phone against his chest, though Nonomiya could probably still hear everything the two of them said. "Look, kid, I know a lot has happened while you were in rehab, so try to keep up. Enma granted both departments a second chance to go about our jobs like some of us never went AWOL, _with_ the understanding that we start acting like we're all actually on the same side—which we _are._ We can't afford to mess all that good will up over some petty grudge."

Reluctantly, Hisoka let him go. In any event, he could sense that his partner's motives were true, his loyalty still to Summons, and that he saw the logical sense in his own argument. "It's Peacekeeping's job to clean stuff like this up and oversee the chain of evidence for Judgment," Natsume said. "It's a sign of good faith that we're willing to put our differences behind us if we bring them in."

"Who says we've put our differences behind us?" Hisoka grumbled, but he didn't want to argue.

"No one's saying you have to like it," Natsume said quietly to him, making an effort to be sympathetic, before he turned his attention back to Nonomiya on the other end of the line. "Yeah, still here. Have him send in a squad, and some boxes to pack all this stuff up. Maybe this will get Todoroki off our backs for a little while longer."

* * *

Hisoka supposed he should consider himself lucky that at least one of the Peacekeepers was a friend of Summons. Or had been one until not that long ago, anyway.

Todoroki had sent Kazuma and her new partner along with the evidence-gathering party, and though she and Hisoka avoided eye contact, he felt reassured by her presence. Watari, as an ostensibly neutral entity, and as the chief scientist already working the connected cases, accompanied them. Though he would have come along one way or another, Hisoka liked to think Watari's presence here aggravated Todoroki's ulcers.

Plus, it made up for the discomfort of having to make nice with Peacekeeping to watch Watari chew out the agents in greatcoats for not packing test tubes carefully enough, or attempting to throw sample analyses indiscriminately in with patient files, his accent getting more pronounced with each sentence.

He practically screamed when one man started tipping a jar back and forth to try to get a better look at the preserved animal brain inside. "The hell you think you're doing?" Watari rushed over to very delicately pry the jar from his hands. "You don't know what's in there! One little slip and we might all be exposed to some awful virus that makes you bleed from all your orifices! You really wanna take that chance? Don't 'we're already dead' me! Your shinigami body can still experience unimaginable horrors, believe you me. ARGH! I feel like I'm babysittin' a bunch of toddler monkeys can't keep their hands to themselves! Just—I dunno—go make a pot of tea or something, leave the thinking to the professionals!"

And no sooner had Watari finished with him than he was off to save another bunch of samples from the careless mitts of another useless agent.

Hisoka had to stifle a laugh. The feeling of victory was brief, however, as one of the agents, a senior in Peacekeeping named Endo whom Hisoka remembered seeing in the assault on Ukyou's house, chose that moment to come over and rub the whole situation in.

"Nice of you to invite us in on your find," he said with a smirk. "I'm surprised you decided to let us handle this, Kurosaki."

 _After you tried to kill us all._ Hisoka could sense him thinking something to that effect. The word "traitor" came to mind, even if Endo was too professional to voice it.

"We don't have anything to hide. Our plan to find Tsuzuki first failed—" It hurt so much to say those words out loud, to one of Todoroki's men at that, but it had the desired effect. Endo believed he was sincere. "—so I don't see how it would benefit Summons to keep this a secret."

"I meant because of your partner." The smirk widened. "It's no secret Natsume hates us. Probably more than the rest of your division combined. I'm surprised he let you make the call."

"He didn't _let_ me do anything," Hisoka said, grudgingly but feeling like he owed it to Natsume to set the record straight. "Natsume was the one who suggested bringing you guys in." Against my wishes, he did refrain from adding.

The Peacekeeper whistled. "What's the world coming to, huh? Never thought Natsume of all people would be the one to extend the olive branch. Or toss out, more like, but still."

Hisoka squared his shoulders. "He insisted it was the right thing to do. What reason would he have to hate you so much?"

The other shrugged. "Beats me. Whatever his beef is, he won't tell us. None of Peacekeeping takes him that seriously anyway. Him or that creepy-ass partner of his."

"I'm right here. If you're going to insult me, you could at least have the guts to do it to my face."

"Not you. The other one." But as he could see Hisoka had no idea what he was talking about, he thought better of what he had been about to say next. "But never mind. If you don't know about that, I'll just let you find out the hard way. Let's just say he's not worth breaking your spine over."

"My spine?"

"Bending over backwards?" Endo snorted. "Natsume isn't your friend, kid. He isn't anybody's friend. He's a freak. Just thought you ought to know."

If only the man knew who he was talking to. "Noted," Hisoka said, eager for the moment he no longer had to deal with any of Todoroki's agents.

" _Excuse me!_ What in the world is going on here?"

With those words, all movement and conversation in the office stopped. The shinigami—all but one of whom happened to be men—turned at the unfamiliar feminine voice to find a smartly dressed woman in glasses and a French twist standing just inside the door of the department. A small suitcase on rollers sat behind her right calf, and she gripped an overnight bag that matched it in her left hand. Hisoka was almost disappointed to see she wasn't wearing a white suit and trench coat. If she had matched what he was envisioning, it would have been easy to hate her.

Across the room, Hisoka and Natsume found each other. Natsume's nod told Hisoka they were on the same page, no need for words. They converged on the woman. "Ms. Akiyama?" Natsume tried.

"It's Doctor, but yes. I am she. And who are you? Police?" Akiyama glared at the two as they came to a stop before her. No doubt wondering if they were letting teenagers join the force now, as her eyes raked over Hisoka. "Feds?"

"We're shinigami," Natsume told her plainly, "and we're here to confiscate—"

"Give me a break." Akiyama snorted at the word "shinigami," and pushed her way between the two, suitcase in tow, to address the whole crew. " _No one_ is confiscating _anything_ in this place before I see a court order. Is that understood? This is delicate, life-saving research that represents decades of this company's resources and hard work. Everything we do here is above board. We have very good lawyers who will tell you the same thing. I would be happy to put you in contact with them first thing in the morning."

"We're not here to arrest or serve you, Doctor," Natsume explained as he followed after her. "We don't represent the legal interests of mortal governments. But your research—if that's what you call testing an unknown substance on dying patients without their knowledge or consent—cannot be allowed to continue."

At the accusatory tone in his voice, Akiyama folded her arms over her chest, and faced Natsume squarely. Even Hisoka was surprised by his partner's clear displeasure. Natsume hadn't expressed the same feelings so strongly back in Wakayama. Of the two of them, he had been the most careful to remain unemotional.

"My research," Akiyama said, as though she were trying to win back the nobility of the word, "saves lives. So perhaps my methods are a little outside the ethical box, but countless people are allowed to die every single day while promising cures languish in decades of animal testing. No one should have to be consigned to a slow, wasting, painful death. Consigned, may I remind you, Mr. . . .?"

"Natsume."

"Mr. Natsume—without their foreknowledge or consent. Nobody asks to be put through that kind of pain. In case you haven't seen their effects already, diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, ALS—these things may be natural, but that in no ways means we have to throw up our hands in defeat and let them happen to good people. We have the means here to save millions of lives. What I've done is only to prove that it's possible."

"What is?" It was Hisoka who spoke up, only asking the question that was burning on every Summons agent's lips. "What did you give those people to cure them?"

But Akiyama was suddenly very interested in keeping quiet. "That's proprietary information."

Beside him, Natsume snorted. His opinion wasn't difficult to discern. He thought it was all about money and fame for the doctor. But Hisoka wasn't so sure. The vibe he got was a bit different, and he wasn't about to let his theory go. He said to Akiyama, "Did Muraki Kazutaka give it to you? Tell you to try it out on people? Are you doing this for him?"

A look of surprise crossed the young doctor's face, where Hisoka had been expecting the terror of being caught out. "How do you know that name?" she said. "I haven't heard it in a long time."

"Bullshit," Natsume said under his breath.

Akiyama turned to him. "It's true. And I don't know why you think I'd be working with him. I understand Dr. Sakuraiji was a personal friend of Muraki's a decade or so back, but my understanding was that he's been dead for a few years. He was killed in a lab incident, wasn't he? A fire?"

The way she was looking at Hisoka, he had the feeling she was trying very hard to figure him out. She may not have had the benefit of his empathic skills, but that didn't stop her from trying to read meaning from his expression, his intonation.

She couldn't have known how much of an open book she allowed herself to be. While she was trying to cold read Hisoka, a whole slew of her own emotions and pathways of thought were making themselves readily available to him. He could feel her trying to reason out all the ramifications of their raid of her office, running through various options for what to do next like a lab mouse running a maze, ticking off dead ends as she went. And behind that, surrounded by a cloud of righteous anger, an impression of illness and filial love and heartbreak—clutched tight to her heart like a token, a talisman that fueled her passion. Behind the cunning facade was a hurt young woman determined to make the world a better place, whether it wanted her to or not.

Of Muraki, he didn't sense a thing, other than a lingering question brought up by his own mention.

"I believe you." He heard the words coming out of his mouth as if spoken by someone else. But it was true.

Natsume looked at him like he was a traitor. He knew better than to argue with Hisoka's talents, however. "Alright. But that doesn't change the fact that what you did was unnatural," he said to Akiyama, unwilling to budge. "Whatever you did to those people to cure them of their disease, you didn't make them better. You made them abominations."

"That doesn't make any sense." Akiyama glared at him. "I _saved_ those people from certain death. Medical science saved them. What are you people, some kind of religious nuts who think only God can decide whether a person lives or dies?"

Patience now thread-bare, Natsume laughed as he shook his head. "Lady, you really have no idea."

"Okay!" Watari saw that as his moment to take control of the conversation. He had brought the largest Peacekeeper over with him, and at his gesture, the man in the greatcoat stepped behind Akiyama and took her elbow. "If you can just step into your office with me a moment, mum—"

"It's _Doctor_ ," Akiyama growled, and glared daggers at the Peacekeeper holding her arm in his grip.

"Doctor," Watari resumed with his winningest smile, "I'm sure I can clear this whole thing up for you in a way you'll find a bit more satisfactory. I apologize for my colleagues here, but as you may have been able to tell, they aren't as well versed in the subtleties of the scientific method as you and myself . . ."

To Hisoka's relief, Akiyama went with him willingly; and he was more than content to let the job of explaining the situation to a mortal fall to someone else.

As for Natsume, he let out a growl as soon as Akiyama was out of earshot, ran his hands irritatedly through his hair—Hisoka worried for a moment he would actually try to yank out handfuls—and stomped off grumbling about evidence not collecting itself.

Endo's reappearance by Hisoka's side wasn't any more welcome. "I wouldn't worry about the girl if I were you," he said in the same slimy voice as before. "What was her name?"

"Akiyama," Hisoka supplied.

"Right. We'll be seeing her soon enough. Cases like this, the mortal loses their life's work in an instant—sure to be a suicide case. I'd bet money on it."

Hisoka wanted to bite off the hand Endo clapped on his shoulder. But he could sense the Peacekeeper anticipating a combative reaction, and didn't want to give him any satisfaction.

He glanced over at Natsume while the Peacekeepers went about their work, and appeared to be the only one to see Natsume pick a couple of CDs from inside one evidence box, and nonchalantly slip them inside his jacket.

* * *

The conversation between Akiyama and the Summons agents was like a train wreck Imai couldn't look away from. At first because the mortal woman's outrage commanded attention, and years of training had instilled in him a cautious awareness of his surroundings. He didn't know what she might be motivated to do when faced with the destruction of her work. He had to be prepared to respond to a violent confrontation at a moment's notice.

But it was the teenage kid with the light hair who really captured his attention. _I know him. I know I know him._ But where he knew him from, Imai was drawing a blank. Which was weird. He didn't often run across someone with green eyes who wasn't a foreigner; he would have thought that alone would give him some clue as to why the boy looked familiar; but it was like he was trying to access a part of his brain that was password protected, and none of the passwords he tried made a difference.

His trouble must have shown on his face, because Kazuma asked him what was wrong.

Imai shook himself out of his stare. "Nothing. I think. Just this weird sense of deja vu. Like I've seen that Summons kid somewhere before. What's his name?"

"Kurosaki," Kazuma said. "Kurosaki Hisoka." But that was all the help she was going to give him.

"Huh." The name didn't ring any bells either. Well, maybe a faint tinkling, but Imai couldn't be sure whether he was just imagining it. "Don't know why I would think I'd met a dead kid before, though."

Was it just his imagination, or did a flash of worry cross Kazuma's eyes? But she replied nonchalantly: "Well, shinigami do masquerade as living people when they're investigating their cases. He usually works Kyushu. And you're from Kumamoto, right? Maybe you ran into him while he was on a case."

"Is that a bad thing? There some kind of underworld law against it?"

Kazuma shook her head. "Not unless you're trying to contact past associates or family members, or anyone who knew who you were and that you were dead. I'm sure if you saw him when you were alive, it wasn't in any context that's cause for alarm or reprimand. Could even have been something as minor as a face in the crowd."

"Yeah. I guess it could be. . . ." But Imai still wasn't sure. And, after all, he had just arrived here. His new Peacekeeping colleagues told him it wasn't unusual for it to take years to finally accept one's own death. Imai was just a rookie—something he hadn't been in a long time—with no idea whether feelings of deja vu were a common occurrence in the recently dead.

Or maybe Kazuma had hit the nail on the head, and he had merely seen Kurosaki's face in a crowd. The kid stood out just enough for his unique features to be memorable.

Then again, maybe it was something more. And not ignoring that niggling "what if" was what had made Imai a good detective in life. He wouldn't rest until he got to the bottom of the mystery. Like hearing a strain of a song he knew he knew, he just couldn't remember where he'd heard it from. . . .

* * *

"I am pleased to say that as of this morning's raid on the Sakuraiji offices, there have been no new anomalous candles fitting the pattern. It would appear that this disturbance has finally been put to bed." To put a punctuation mark on that statement, the Count shut the large tome sitting before him on the long dining table. "Your shinigami have done well, Chief Konoe."

"I'm rather proud of them." Konoe laced his fingers together as he set his hands on the table. "And now that we have Kurosaki back, things finally seem as though they're returning to normal. Almost."

"Almost," the Count echoed his agreement, in a soft and thoughtful tone. "You said you have your man Watari analyzing the cases' blood as we speak?"

"That is correct."

"And you are positive you can count on his discretion?"

The concern in the Count's voice made Konoe a tad nervous, but that was one thing he was sure of. "Watari may not have always been a Summons officer, but he's loyal to us and has been for quite some time. The scatterbrained, mad scientist routine is largely a mask hiding his real genius, though he dons it so well I'm not sure he's entirely aware of it himself. It keeps our enemies from taking him too seriously, though, and that's what matters most."

"Mm. Masks are something we can relate to."

Their conversation was interrupted only briefly by Watson's appearance, and the squeaky wheels of a tea cart the short, rotting butler was rolling along beside the table. "Can I get you anything else, Chief Konoe?" he asked in his typical warbly way that sounded as though he were trying very hard to keep his remaining teeth from falling out.

As Konoe accepted a cup of tea, he assured Watson he couldn't eat another bite, but that the roulade had been magnificent. No less than what he had come to expect from luncheons at the Castle of Candles. He suspected that even without his mentioning it there would be a box of petit fours like the ones on the cart waiting for him by the door by the time he was ready to head back to the office.

"What I'm more concerned about," the Count resumed after a bite of his own of one of the little cakes, "is how your man intends to keep the results, once he has them, from reaching Todoroki's—and, by extension, Enma's—ear. You and I both know what he will find—"

"And when he does, he will recognize the sensitive nature of it. Trust his judgment, Count."

"But how well can he lie?"

"He's more than capable of forging test results and refraining from letting anything that might incriminate Summons slip. He's kept secrets as sensitive as this before."

"Yes. _Enma's_ secrets, not ours. What will he say to an inquisition force, if Todoroki pushes it that far, that won't come asking nicely for answers, or be satisfied by his evasions? I trust you when you say this man is a genius, Konoe—hell, I've seen what wonderful inventions he's capable of myself—but intelligence does not always _aid_ duplicity."

That was something he need not remind Konoe of. It was a constant lament of his these days, that he could not twist facts to suit his own purposes with the same finesse and suspension of conscience with which Todoroki did. Even if that was one of the very traits that Konoe despised in his old colleague.

"And it is _very_ important," the Count said, "that no one outside of this room, Watari, and Mr. Tatsumi learn the true nature of what was given to those patients. Not even the boy can know."

That came as a surprise. "You've been fine with bringing Kurosaki in as a confidante until now. What's different about this?"

"I fear if he knew, the knowledge would destroy what small chance we have of rescuing a favorable outcome from this entire debacle. From what you've told me, we may have already missed our chance. Kurosaki has already been weakened physically by the trauma he endured, and who can tell the extent of the damage done to his psyche, let alone to his will to fight for what's right? His faith in Tsuzuki _must_ remain intact if we have any hope of succeeding, or I fear we could lose them both. That is why you must promise me, Konoe, that you will do everything in your power to keep the results of Watari's tests a secret from him."

The gravity of the Count's words was unmistakable, even if the mask staring back at Konoe remained unreadable. Yes, he understood the precariousness of their situation. He understood what they stood to lose if what the Count was asking of him turned out to be the wrong choice.

"You have my word," Konoe said, nevertheless, though in his heart he knew the most he could do was try. _For what my word is worth._ The Count didn't know Kurosaki like he did. If that boy had a question, he didn't rest until he got a satisfactory answer. And he had a knack for knowing when he was being lied to.

* * *

Archery usually did the trick for Hisoka when he wanted to clear his head after a case. Sometimes, if the case was a little harder, a little more emotional, it took a little extra effort to hold his concentration.

These last two cases, his first since being back, weren't what he would have called difficult. If anything, they had been over in the relative blink of an eye, so much so he wondered if there was something he had forgotten. Even the two souls he and Natsume had been sent to retrieve in Wakayama had been understanding in the end, despite what Hisoka felt the two shinigami deserved. Perhaps having accepted the inevitability of their deaths in the months or years before their sudden recoveries, they had not had the time to grow accustomed again to the prospect of living.

Although, perhaps their acceptance was more accurately the bittersweet acceptance of someone who knew when something was too good to be true. At very least, the two had been prepared to die. Which was something shinigami weren't as often able to say about their summons as one would predict.

And now they could all get back to hunting down ghostly possessions and demonic bargains and the odd souls who simply forgot to die. Until someone else came along with a miracle drug like Akiyama's. Though Hisoka knew he couldn't stop her from trying to cure people again—that was, if and when she ever managed to replicate her research—he wasn't worried about that happening anytime soon.

Yet _something_ was weighing on him. He couldn't pinpoint the cause, but he felt it.

A tightness in the chest. A restlessness in the limbs.

A feeling like something was sitting on his lungs when he tried his usual breathing exercises.

He pushed through anyway, focusing on the tension of the string, the stinging of the arrow's nock between his gloved fingers—tender fingers whose calluses had failed to grow back with the new flesh. He lined up the point of his arrow with his target, willing it to stop its trembling long enough to pull off the shot.

He waited for the pause between heartbeats to release. The twang of the bow, the slap as the arrowhead buried itself in the target, were welcome and familiar after so long a hiatus.

The gap between the bull's eye and where his arrow had hit, not so much.

Hisoka sighed, willing himself not to get upset at his own inaccuracy. _You're still healing, even if it doesn't feel like it. Watari said it would take a while for the muscle memory to come back._ _This is something you just have to accept. Work through._

"Oh," said Terazuma, when he saw Hisoka already at the range. "Sorry to interrupt."

Hisoka glanced over at his coworker, already changed into hakama and gloves, a longbow in one hand. "Not that there's much to interrupt," he said. "Besides, I could probably use the company." He hadn't had a chance to speak with Terazuma one-on-one in more than a month; this was long overdue.

Though Hisoka was too ashamed to admit out loud that he was having a hard time adjusting to Terazuma's new—or should he say old?—look. As long as Hisoka had known him, Terazuma had radiated wild masculinity, with his sharp ears and teeth and fiery eyes, and corded muscles peeking out from under his sleeves—fitting some standard of physical perfection that Hisoka couldn't help envying, knowing it was something he, trapped forever in his slight teenage body, would never achieve himself.

Now he couldn't help feeling as though his standard had been shown to be an illusion, though he knew it wasn't Terazuma's fault. Terazuma never asked for the physical traits that came along with possession by Kokushungei. For that matter, he hadn't asked to be exorcised of his shikigami and reverted back to his original, average human condition, either. That was Hisoka's fault. _If I hadn't attacked with Rikugou . . ._

"You use this time for meditation, don't you?" Terazuma was saying, still skeptical that Hisoka didn't mind his being there.

Hisoka had to shake himself from his guilt. "Yeah. Sometimes. Right now, though, I'm just trying to get myself back in fighting shape." Plus, Hisoka wasn't sure he wanted to be left alone with his thoughts just now.

"Oh. Right."

Terazuma stepped up to the pad beside Hisoka, rolling his shoulders and bouncing on the balls of his feet before taking a deep breath, nocking his first arrow, and calmly taking aim. When he released, his arrow flew true to its mark; but something must have felt off, judging by the disapproving sound Terazuma made. Maybe the black lion had given him invisible gifts as well, like better eyesight, or greater steadiness, which only Terazuma could feel the absence of.

"You know, they wouldn't tell us about your injuries," he said with a brief glance over his shoulder in Hisoka's direction. "Tatsumi and the chief, I mean. Watari said something about extensive burns, but I think they just wanted to respect your privacy. —Which we all get, by the way. I'm not trying to pry. I just wanted to offer an explanation for why we never came to visit you. We wanted to, but were told it wouldn't be a good idea."

Once again, Hisoka had to wonder if Watari wasn't a secret empath. The last thing Hisoka would have wanted was for his coworkers to see him in the condition he had been in. The red, twisted skin, that felt like it was being set on fire all over again whenever anything touched it. The grotesque stumps that grew a little more every day. . . . "You're right about the burns. I guess they didn't mention that I lost an arm and both legs in the explosion, either."

"No kidding!" Terazuma looked as though he weren't sure whether to be horrified or impressed. "But they came back? I mean, obviously they did. You're standing right in front of me with all your limbs. . . ."

Hisoka smiled. His coworker's voice might have sounded different without his shiki's influence, but his _way_ of talking and choice of words were one-hundred-percent Terazuma. "They came back," Hisoka confirmed, raising his bow for another shot. "Not much different from healing from a deep cut, really. Other than the amount of recovery time." And everything else, but Hisoka didn't want to get into the specifics. "It's just that they're like a brand-new pair of shoes. They're tight and don't feel entirely like a part of me just yet."

As if to prove it, Hisoka's next shot went wide of the mark the other way. He had overcompensated for the last one.

"Case in point."

"You'll get there," Terazuma assured him. "Just like riding a horse. Or a bike. Whatever the saying is. You and me both, we've got some adjusting to do."

Though his shot didn't exactly make Hisoka believe him. Terazuma's arrow hit the outside of his target's bull's eye.

"What about you?" Hisoka ventured. "Does it feel different shooting without Kokushungei?"

"What _doesn't_ feel different? You share a mind with someone so long, to have that suddenly ripped away from you—"

"You miss her?"

Terazuma sighed. "Yeah. There was a time I would have been _glad_ to be rid of her—you never really get used to the extra voice in your head, sharing your every thought, everything you feel. . . . But at some point, I guess she started to feel like a part of me. Now that part isn't there anymore, and I'm left with this gaping hole in who I am, and I have no idea how I'm going to fix it."

For a moment, in his honesty, he let down his defenses, and so did Hisoka. He knew how that felt, that sense of missing a crucial piece. Terazuma's feelings seemed to flicker there near him like a warm flame, beckoning to some resonant thing inside Hisoka's own soul. He wanted to reach out and touch it—

But the fear of the pain, the knowing he was in part—in large part—responsible for it, made him draw back, made him re-erect the walls that surrounded his psyche. "Would you take her back? If you could?"

The smile that spread across Terazuma's lips made him look for a moment like a young boy nurturing a singularly happy thought. "In a heartbeat. It's weird, right? For so long I hated being possessed. I resented it. It's inconvenient, often painful, and forget about any notion of privacy. But you get used to the feeling of never being alone. You don't realize how much until that voice in your head is suddenly gone, and it's just you left."

"But you're not alone. You have Wakaba."

"Yeah." Terazuma laughed. The innocent smile turned a little bit lecherous before he could help it. "Yeah, I do have her. If there's one positive thing to come out of all of this." A faint blush colored his cheeks at some thought that wasn't as private as he would have liked, and he said, "But you weren't supposed to know about that, kid."

"Did you forget? Hard to keep secrets from an empath."

"Maybe an empath ought to mind his own damn business."

But even that chiding was good-natured. Hisoka could see just how much good it had done his coworker, to finally be able to address his affections toward Wakaba. So long as his possession by the black lion had made Terazuma literally untouchable, the two had gone to great lengths to deny the true depth of their feelings for one another, feelings which went far beyond the professional. Now both of them had a little extra spring in their step, a little extra glow in their energies, that hadn't been there before. Any fool would have seen that their relationship had only benefitted from the physical, human touch that had been denied them for so long.

It was hard not to be envious of them. "Well," Hisoka said, feeling his own face heat as he said it, "I'm happy for you both."

Terazuma snorted. "Thanks, kid."

"I mean it. You two have been through a lot together—had to _put up_ with a lot together. If you can't be happy in death, when can you be?"

"Speaking of . . . how are you holding up, Kurosaki?"

Hisoka didn't like the sudden sobriety in his coworker's voice. Talking about his own feelings, let alone someone else's, didn't come all that naturally for Terazuma. Hisoka lowered his bow. "Like I said. My new arm and legs are a little unsteady, but with practice, I'll regain my strength—"

"I wasn't talking about your injuries."

 _I know._ And Hisoka knew what he really meant. He just didn't want to go there. "I'm fine," he insisted, steeling his breath, his grip tensing on the bow. "I don't really think there's anything more to say at the moment."

"Right. Sure. Just like you won't talk about that night. You won't talk about him _—_ I bet you haven't even said his name since you've been back—"

"I said, there's nothing to talk about!"

A wave of hurt and regret rushed over him at his own outburst, feelings the old Terazuma would never have let him feel. And—dare Hisoka put a name to it—sympathy?

Terazuma had spent so long defending himself wherever Tsuzuki was concerned, however, that the actual words came out like a riposte, sharp and meant to wound: "You're not the only one having a hard time with his being gone, kid. Just because Tsuzuki and me never got along that well doesn't mean I didn't respect him, or that I don't care what that Muraki creep has been doing to him this last month—"

"So, you know what I'm going through all of a sudden, is that what you're trying to say?" As if Hisoka needed a reminder of his own failure to keep Tsuzuki safe from that bastard. When he had first come back to lucidity, he'd been sure he had murdered Tsuzuki. But Watari insisted he had not, and Hisoka had had no reason to distrust him. Not when he said Muraki had taken Tsuzuki away—disappeared with him. Why would Watari lie about that? That was worse.

A whole month. With Muraki, and no one to help him. That was a million times worse than the six months of not knowing where Tsuzuki was before it. The thought made Hisoka furious.

So maybe he couldn't help it if Terazuma was the most readily available target to take his fear and frustration out on. "Just because you feel bad now that you treated him like crap all these years?"

"Hey! You have no idea what it was like for me to be his partner, the shit he put me through for the fun of it—"

His words landed on Hisoka's soul like a slap to the face. It must have shown, too, because Terazuma tried just as soon as he'd realized what he'd done to rein them back in.

But he couldn't take them back. Even more, he couldn't take back the emotion he emitted like a gas leak, invisible to himself but no less flammable at the tiniest spark. How tempting it was for Hisoka to be that spark. His blood boiled within him, and his bow hand itched, urging him to lash out at Terazuma like he'd never felt the desire to before. _You say you respect him one moment, and the next you complain about how he treated you? And you expect me to believe you really understand? That you really care?_

 _Did you think I wouldn't notice how you really felt?_

"Kurosaki. . . ." He could feel the apology coming like it was a lump in his own throat. "I—"

"I don't want to hear it. I don't think I want to talk about this anymore."

And before Terazuma could try to backpedal any further, Hisoka hurried off the range, refraining from throwing down his bow by the thinnest of threads. The tightness in his chest was getting worse. Breathing, more difficult. He tried to calm his own trembling muscles, but the harder he grasped for control, the more it seemed to be slipping from him. He needed out of the dojo—now, before anyone else came by and saw him. He needed fresh air.

Hisoka was barely outside those walls when it hit him. Like a blow to the gut. Bracing himself against the nearest post, he doubled over, feeling like he was going to be sick. But all the came out of him was a pathetic whimper of a cry, like that of a small, terrified animal.

He clamped his hands over his mouth. He could feel the scream building in his throat, pushing to get out. The more he held it in, the more his body shook out of his control. Tears blurred his vision, running hot over the backs of his hands. But he didn't dare wipe them away. He couldn't risk anyone hearing him and rushing to his aid. The pain was excruciating—the feeling he had tried so hard not to feel, like a part of him had been brutally ripped away—but he couldn't afford to let anyone find him like this. Miserable and weak.

Because if Hisoka couldn't even keep himself from falling apart here, in the safety of Enma-cho, how could he expect Tsuzuki to get through whatever that monster had planned for him in one piece?


	7. Play along

"Tsuzuki. . . ."

He flinched, awakened by the light brush of that voice against his sleeping mind, and sat up. The book that had been propped open on his chest fell to the floor, the sound ringing in his ears in the otherwise silent apartment. He shut his eyes as the lamp on the table by his head was switched on, the light banishing the last echoes of . . . whatever he had been dreaming about. He couldn't remember, only that he missed it terribly already.

"I must have fallen asleep. . . ." He couldn't even remember what he had been reading. It was dark in the library—

Which meant it was dark outside. _Damn it._ Tsuzuki had been meaning to catch the moment day changed to night in this place—it always seemed to happen so suddenly—but he'd missed it again.

He started to push himself up from the davenport he was sprawled across—then stopped. What was that wonderful aroma? . . .

"I thought you might join me for supper," Muraki said, slipping out of his coat as he stepped across the rug to the library door, "even if it is a bit late for it. I haven't yet eaten." He didn't ask if Tsuzuki had. He already knew the answer.

Once again, Tsuzuki had also slept through Muraki's arrival. "How did you get in here?"

Muraki laughed. "Same way I always do."

Which still wasn't an answer. The apartment was entirely self-contained, with no doors leading outside of it. Tsuzuki knew teleportation was not beyond Muraki's abilities, but he had yet to be told one way or another if that was Muraki's means of entrance. Even the dark streaks of raindrops on his coat weren't really a clue. It could be raining outside the apartment as they spoke, but just as likely the rain had come from somewhere else.

Slowly, giving himself time to stretch—and to nurse his suspicions—Tsuzuki got up and followed him to the dining room. Lately meals had begun to appear in this room twice a day, but though Tsuzuki suspected Muraki was the one who brought them, he'd never stayed to keep Tsuzuki company while he ate. Midday tea had, until now, remained the extent of their dining together.

It was an intimate space, the dining room, made all the more so by the dim electric lights and dark wood chair rail. A mantelpiece had been constructed against one wall, but it was only a facade: There had never been a hearth behind it. (Tsuzuki had already checked it for false walls or hidden doorways, just as he had the library bookshelves and the space behind every hanging painting.) But it gave the impression of the potential for warmth, if one ignored the cold stares of the dolls sitting above it.

Take-out containers were already partially unpacked, and two glasses of dark red wine sat beside two place settings at one corner of the table. Tsuzuki recognized tomato and basil, the more subtle scents of olive oil and salty cheese. His mouth watered despite himself.

"I seem to recall Italian is your favorite," Muraki said as he removed lids from the last few containers. "Was I wrong?"

No, however much Tsuzuki wished he could say he was. How just like Muraki this was, to take every last thing that Tsuzuki loved and ruin it.

"Come. Have a seat."

But Tsuzuki wouldn't budge. "The hell is this, Muraki?"

The doctor blinked as he looked up, though he couldn't possibly have been surprised by Tsuzuki's reaction. "It's a month now, to the day, since you came to me. I thought that was cause enough to treat ourselves to something different. Something special."

"So, what? Is this your idea of an anniversary dinner?" Even the word, with its implications of couplehood, left a bad taste in Tsuzuki's mouth.

"Well, technically a year would have to pass before it could properly be called an anniversary. But if you prefer to think of it that way, I won't begrudge you the use of the term."

But Tsuzuki didn't want to think of it that way. He wanted very much not to think of it that way.

Muraki smiled at him, a hand on the back of Tsuzuki's waiting chair. "Are you going to join me or not?"

"Do I have a choice?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Muraki answered anyway, "You always have a choice."

Whatever game he was playing, it would go no further if Tsuzuki didn't play along. And just maybe, if Tsuzuki humored him long enough, Muraki might let his defenses slip enough to reveal, after a month of this nonsense, something about what that game actually entailed.

So Tsuzuki took his seat; and, satisfied, Muraki began to serve him, filling his plate with roasted spring vegetables and risotto ai funghi and veal parmigiana, swimming in sauce. Tsuzuki tried to remain unmoved with that first, tentative bite, but the food was too good, and soon he was all but cramming it in, his tastebuds in heaven and his stomach growling to be filled.

When Tsuzuki caught himself at it, and forced himself to slow down, Muraki chuckled. "I take it everything meets with your approval."

"Does it ever," Tsuzuki grudgingly admitted around a bite of veal so tender it all but melted in his mouth. He washed it down with a generous swig of wine, which he also hated to admit was perfectly chosen. "But I can't help but think you wasted your money on me."

"I hardly think so," Muraki said between more measured bites. "It's the least I can do. To reward you for your patience this last month, but also to show my appreciation. After all, I would not be here if not for you. In more ways than one."

There was something in the way he said it, Tsuzuki knew he wasn't just referring, for the thousandth time, to that night one month ago. He knew it was bait, but not taking it would only draw out this charade. "You're still going on about being my son?" Tsuzuki tried to sound dismissive, as if he didn't believe what he knew was true. He remembered tearing up the paper that showed without a doubt their genetic similarity, as though that the act of tearing up the evidence were enough to turn it all into a lie.

"Biologically," Muraki amended. "Genetically, you _are_ my father. That fact is too significant to be ignored or downplayed. However, I cannot force myself to think of you the way a son would think of a father. As far as I am concerned, the man who raised me under his roof bears that title, even if that is where his patrilineal obligation ended."

"Then why bring it up to begin with?" Tsuzuki genuinely wanted to know. "Just to put me through the pain of knowing that, if I'd made a few different decisions in my life, the world would have been spared your existence, and all the suffering that followed?"

"I would not have phrased it in quite that way, but yes. It is remarkable how things work out, is it not—what great things can come from confluences of events that seem quite random and unconnected at the time? But then, history is made of such confluences. Perhaps someone of your unique genetic makeup running by pure chance into someone like my grandfather, who was uniquely qualified to make something of it, did not alter the world in any grand way, but I like to think the consequences of it so far have been, in their own way, rather earth-shattering. _I_ would not alter them for the world."

"Of course not. Or else you wouldn't be here. And we wouldn't get to have this riveting conversation."

"Precisely." Muraki's wine glass was almost to his lips when he paused, and smiled to himself, as though in secret vindication. He confessed, "I had hoped a similar thought had occurred to you."

Tsuzuki didn't follow. "Why is that?"

"I noticed you were reading _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ before you fell asleep. Only the philosophical treatise on accepting—no, _embracing_ the consequences of past actions beyond our control, no matter how unconscionable said actions may remain in hindsight."

"I thought it was about a hermit living in a cave with his talking animal friends," Tsuzuki said, more to himself than Muraki. He hadn't gotten far enough to reach all that other stuff.

That earned him another laugh. "Ah. Well, I suppose we all see that to which we are most likely to relate," said Muraki. "I must admit I've given you plenty of reason this past month to feel like a hermit in a cave."

"If I were a dog," Tsuzuki grumbled, not appreciating being laughed at when he was perfectly serious, "you'd at least take me out for some fresh air and a shit every once in a while."

That sobered Muraki right up, Tsuzuki noticed with a twinge of triumph. Even if the smile refused to leave his lips entirely.

"You saved my life," Muraki said. "Not just once: repeatedly. And when you had every opportunity to end me for good. I am only trying to show my gratitude—"

"Then you've got a strange way of showing it."

"And have you given much thought to why you made the decisions you did?" That shut Tsuzuki up, and made him reluctant to meet Muraki's penetrating glare. "Why, when I posed a direct threat to the system of order and justice you pretend to represent, not to mention your dear friends—when I've killed almost as many innocents as you have, you made an exception to your moral and righteous code to pull me out of the fire?"

" _I_ didn't pull you out of that fire! If it'd been up to me, you would have stayed there and burned—like you deserved to!"

"I'm speaking metaphorically. I could have died a month ago if you had let the boy have his way. We both could have." So Muraki had come to the same realization as Tsuzuki had; and here Tsuzuki had thought—hoped—that Muraki had been too busy at the time, or too trapped in time, to notice how close he had come to oblivion. "You would have liked that, wouldn't you? To finally achieve your final rest. To know nothing more. It would certainly uncomplicate things for your former associates if you removed the two of us from the picture for good. Yet you chose to sacrifice the boy—"

Tsuzuki's fork clattered to his plate. "Don't call him that, he has a name."

"I believe you meant to say he _had_ a name. Isn't that right, Tsuzuki? I know he did. And now whatever used to be Kurosaki Hisoka—" (Tsuzuki had been wrong; this was worse; Muraki had no right to say that name) "—is gone. All because you couldn't bear to let him kill me."

"Clearly I made the wrong decision." And wasn't it obvious how he regretted it every second of every day since? Hadn't he earned the right to bear that pain in silence?

Muraki shook his head. "I don't think so. That is, whatever came of it, I don't believe you thought it _was_ the wrong decision at the time. _Something_ made you stop his bird's attack. Something, perhaps, that you were not even consciously aware was there. I like to think it was something you finally understood about the two of us, about our interconnectedness—"

Something between a sob and a growl of frustration escaped Tsuzuki's throat in protest. He wanted to cover his ears, to shut out the words, but what good would it have done? He couldn't shut out his own thoughts. Or that little voice that had always been there whispering in the dark corners of the back of his mind, that he now realized sounded an awful lot like Muraki. As though they'd been reading the same books.

Or were made of the same stuff.

"I . . . could be wrong," Muraki amended, disingenuously apologetic at Tsuzuki's reaction. "What I cannot deny—what you cannot deny—is where your decisions have brought us. Whether you meant to or not, you chose me over the boy—over Yomi, and whatever vows you made to your god—"

"I didn't choose this," Tsuzuki hissed.

"And now I have to wonder what it was all for," Muraki went on as though he hadn't been refuted. "What paths have opened before us that might never have had a chance to be, if everything that has brought us to this point had unfolded even the slightest bit differently?"

He seemed as though he wanted to say more, but something stopped him. When the silence dragged on for several seconds, Tsuzuki looked up from his abandoned plate and own thoughts to see what had given Muraki pause.

And was surprised to see him just sitting there, his fork still in his hand, a troubled look slowly making its way over his face.

"What paths?"

At Tsuzuki's question, Muraki started as if out of a trance. "My apologies, Tsuzuki," he said, clearly distracted. "I'm afraid you'll have to enjoy the rest of this so-called anniversary dinner alone—"

"You're leaving?" As Muraki rose to his feet, Tsuzuki shot to his.

"Another matter requires my attention. Regrettably, as I was rather enjoying the conversation."

"Oh, I'm not letting you get away that easily." This was his chance, maybe the only one he was going to get, to find out how Muraki was getting in and out of the apartment. "If you're leaving, I'm coming with you—"

Tsuzuki never made it to the door, however. Muraki moved so fast, Tsuzuki barely had time to react to the doctor's hands on him before he was thrown back against the edge of the dining table, his breath knocked out of him but otherwise unhurt, while Muraki disappeared through the rapidly closing double doors.

Tsuzuki threw himself against them, rattled the handles. Banged against the solid wood. Shouted to be let out. But, of course, none of it did any good.

And by the time he did manage to get free of the room, courtesy of the cutlery and his own persistence, Muraki was long gone. Again.

* * *

"I told her to leave her number, sir, and that you would call her back," Sakaki said as Muraki came down the stairs, "but she insisted that she _had_ to speak directly to you right away. That it was urgent."

Muraki's butler handed him a small piece of paper, on which he had written the name of the caller. One Dr. Akiyama. It wasn't exactly a rare name, but he knew he had met her once before. It was not like him to forget a kindred spirit.

He waited until Sakaki was out of earshot before he took the caller off hold. "Ms. Akiyama," he said, in the brightest tone he could manage, having been so recently interrupted for this. He did not need to introduce himself; she would know him by voice. "May I ask how you came by this number?"

The question seemed to take her aback. As if she'd had a script all worked out for this call, and he had just made her toss the whole thing out. "I-it was in Dr. Sakuraiji's effects at the office, under emergency contacts. I wasn't sure it would work, but—well, I'm not sure if you've heard, but Dr. Sakuraiji has been on leave for the past month—"

Leave. Was that where she was telling her colleagues their employer had gone? But Muraki decided to humor her, see what playing along might reveal. "I heard. And my man did relay your message that this was an emergency."

"I need your help, Dr. Muraki." He heard relief in Akiyama's voice. So far he hadn't hung up on her. "I was hoping maybe you remembered me from the mixer at Waseda where we met a few years ago. I was a post-grad at the time and Dr. Sakuraiji my mentor. She, um, wasn't there that night either, her work was keeping her busy, but we talked for a time about cellular regeneration, and whether certain genetic mechanisms could be 'switched on' to combat disease—"

"I remember." And all the time she spent on pointless reminisces was time he could have been spending with Tsuzuki.

"Right," said Akiyama. "Well . . ." She laughed. "It worked. We figured out how to do it, and it actually bloody worked!"

Muraki felt his blood run cold as she told him all in a rush about the trials she had been running in secret, patients she had been bringing back from the brink of death with some new gene therapy that Ukyou had been working on before her disappearance. He knew exactly what she was going to tell him, what she had done. He didn't need to hear the actual confession.

"The problem is, it's all gone. All our research, our equipment, precious samples—" A nervous laugh, the defense of a woman who had been trying very hard all day not to break down into tears of frustration and was finally nearing her wits' end. "Some men came in the middle of the night and ransacked the place. Took or destroyed every trace of what Dr. Sakuraiji had been working on for the past twenty years.

"I don't know what I'm going to tell her when she gets back. I tried every number I could, but I can't get ahold of her. I thought maybe if we could at least recover some of the original samples, if any still existed, we could start over again while the data was still fresh in our minds. It's never too late to rebuild as long as we have those samples. They came from your grandfather, Doctor, if I'm not mistaken. Didn't they?"

That sounded about right. It had been Muraki's father's parting gift to the senior Sakuraiji when they ended their working relationship, and Muraki was well aware that Ukyou's old man had cloned them for use in his own pharmaceutical research. They were what Ukyou had been working with her entire career. A billion little pieces of Tsuzuki Asato, his grandfather's mysterious undying patient.

And now this Akiyama woman had started sticking them into patients across the country. Without Ukyou's knowledge or permission, surely, and certainly without his. And without any care for the side effects—either to the patients, or to Ukyou, her own employer. Let alone any thought for what it might mean for him, when word of these "miracle" cures got out.

The audacity of her, to come asking him for more now. Did she think he just had Tsuzuki's tissue lying around? And even if he did, that was hardly an excuse in her own defense. "These men you say ransacked your lab. Who were they?"

"I don't think they were government, if that's what you're asking. Most likely some reactionary, Luddite protest group who're afraid genetic research goes against God's will, or some such nonsense. They called themselves _shinigami_." By Akiyama's derisive laugh, she thought it was a joke. "Can you believe that? As if scientists like us are supposed to believe those things exist?"

The boy. He had to be behind this. Muraki was sure of it. As deeply as he had wanted to believe that brat was finally gone from his life, he couldn't swallow what he knew was a lie.

But nor was he willing to let this mistake go unpunished.

"You're right," he told Akiyama. Her register was simple to mimic, to feign sympathy with. She would buy it, that stupid woman, and believe he was on her side. "This research is too important to let go without a fight. I think we should meet."


	8. Heal thyself

Nagai Minami—Nan to her ex-husband—must have cleared her throat and fidgeted with her suit half a dozen times before she could find the courage to ring the doorbell. If her colleagues could see her, her hesitation would have struck them as quite out-of-character. But these sorts of house calls were not what she was used to making.

A woman in her mid-twenties answered the door, her smile faltering a little. "Mrs. Asai?" said Nan.

Mrs. Asai must have recognized her type. "You want to speak to my husband?"

"If it isn't too much trouble."

As if on cue, the man in question appeared in the hall, chasing his four-year-old daughter. In the middle of a pretend monster growl, he looked up, and his eyes widened in recognition. He sobered. And Nan could see traces of the burns she had been briefed would be there, the shiny, still-raw patches on one side of his face and neck.

"I'll bring you two some tea," his wife said, making way for Nan to enter, and led her daughter by the hand back to the kitchen with her.

"My condolences," Asai said when the two of them were seated in the living room. "I know you were separated, but it couldn't have been easy, what with the history you two had."

"Nothing with Yuu was ever easy," Nan said with a fond smile, as much to herself as to Asai. "But it has been . . . strange, surreal, to think I'll never see him again. Even through the divorce, when there were times I wanted nothing more to do with him, I always knew he was there if I needed him. A phone call away."

Asai looked down at his knees. His wife brought a tray with tea for two, and promptly excused herself again.

"In any case," said Nan as the junior detective poured for her, "I came here to tell _you_ how sorry I was for the loss. You were the most important person in his life at the end. He spoke fondly of you, you know. Yuuto wasn't always an easy man to get along with, and he blew through a lot of partners before you came along. I wonder if maybe you reminded him a little of himself, or like a younger brother he never had. He seemed rather proud when he mentioned you."

That earned her a little lopsided smile. One thing she had noticed about Asai when they were looking into the Muraki matter, he was eager to share ideas that had to do with a case or useless trivia, but when it came to himself, he was careful not to give too much away. So that smile, Nan figured, meant more than it would on another, less self-protective person. "I guess Sempai could be a bit of a grump, but he taught me a lot. About being a detective, and a father."

A curious thing to say, seeing as Imai had never had nor wanted any kids; but Nan figured it must have had some meaning for Asai that was none of her business.

"But you didn't come all the way down here to Kumamoto just for condolences, Ms. Nagai. Did you?"

Nan let out a sigh. "No," she confessed. "I didn't. I figured I owed it to you to give you a heads up, before you go back to work and find out the hard way. The National Police are working very hard to cover the whole incident up. A burst gas line in a residential district where a wanted person was just sighted doesn't look so good for national security, and the local authorities don't like the idea that they've been neglecting utility maintenance either."

"But it wasn't a gas line," Asai said. "Like I told them—"

"I know what you told them. That it was as bright as a nuclear explosion. And trust me, the government is investigating the angle. They've got the block shut down, are running radiation tests—but that's strictly between you and me. The public can't know that there might have been a suitcase bomb set off on Japanese soil. It would dredge up memories of Hiroshima or Nagasaki all over again, incite a panic the Diet can't afford."

"But it wasn't a bomb either," Asai insisted, lowering his voice. "If you read my report, then you know what I saw."

It felt like there was a stone sitting in Nan's stomach. "You mean the giant bird. The one made out of light."

Her tone must have told him well enough what she thought of that. He sat back. "I wasn't hallucinating."

"I'm not suggesting you're somehow at fault. Only . . . sometimes bright lights can play tricks on us, and it was the middle of the night when it happened, your eyes were already adjusted to the dark—"

He laughed, bitterly. "You don't believe me. And I thought you of all people would. Hadn't you just called us about seeing Muraki turn into a devil-man before your eyes? You said you shot at it, with actual bullets. Your colleagues saw it. And you're going to tell me that it was just the light playing tricks on you, too?"

Flashbacks arose, summoned by his words, but Nan forced them back to the corners of her mind. If she wanted to stay sane, she couldn't dwell too much on the implications of that day. There had to be a reasonable explanation for it, one which didn't require the adoption of an entire, antiquated belief system. "We think there was some sort of gas leak in the air conditioning that we weren't aware of at the time," she said, feeling like a liar even as she did. "Some minor malfunction lasting long enough for us all to get a whiff, before the gas dissipated on its own. There have been reports of similar things causing mass-hysteria—"

Asai shook his head. He wasn't believing that any more than she was.

"Look," she tried. "I know something strange happened that night, something that I can't readily explain. But you can't just go around talking about demons and birds made of light and how it's all part of some conspiracy, and think that's going to go over well at your next psych evaluation. You want to keep being a detective, don't you? Well, is getting yourself released from the force over what you did or didn't see any way to honor Imai's memory?"

"And is covering up the truth about how Sempai died any better?"

No, she had to agree, it wasn't. It was an affront to everything she stood for to sit there and lie to Asai just like she had to lie to her colleagues and bosses, and it was an affront to her late ex-husband's memory to say he died in a gas line explosion when that wasn't the truth.

"We both know what we saw," Nan said, her hands tightening together in her lap. "But we must be realistic. Nothing we say can help Yuuto now. I think if he were here, he would want us to think of the work that we do, and keep doing it, to the best of our abilities. If not for him, for the people who rely on our service."

Asai nodded. He leaned over his knees, his clasped hands pressed to his lips, lost in a memory. "Sempai liked to call things as he saw them, didn't care if he ruffled some feathers or stepped on a few toes. Getting to the truth of the matter came first with him. But if we had a person of interest who just wasn't keen on opening up to us, he always knew what to say to make them trust him. Even if he didn't believe what he was saying himself, he would convince you that he was one-hundred-percent on your side."

"Yeah." Nan snorted. "One of the many reasons we broke up."

"But it made him a good detective." He stayed in that memory for a while longer, and Nan wasn't eager or willing to break the silence and pull him out of it. She knew how precious those moments were, when they were all you had left. "It seems it would be a greater dishonor not to live up to his example," Asai said at last.

And Nan took that to mean he wouldn't insist on what he had witnessed when he went back to work. "I agree. I can't deny there's a part of me that wants everyone else to acknowledge what happened, if for no other reason than to prove I'm not losing my mind. But there's another part that feels like Yuuto died for nothing if I dwell on the specifics, and not move on. After all, there's a reason we both went into law enforcement."

Asai's daughter chose that moment to run into the room, grinning and squealing for her daddy. Her mother, close behind, apologized that the girl had slipped away from her too easily.

Nan waved away her apology, as Asai scooped the girl up onto his lap. Watching the three of them together, she felt sorry for herself that she and Imai had never started a family together. Of course, she knew it never would have worked, and she would have felt guilty putting a child through the pain of divorce, of custody battles.

Still, she couldn't help a pang of envy. If something were to happen to Asai, at least his wife would have someone to remember him by, every minute of the day—someone who was also a piece of him, of them both. And what did Nan have but some suits and ties? The first and only watch she ever bought him? A few photographs and awards that Yuuto had always been too embarrassed to display? There weren't even ashes left.

"You know you always have someone here to talk to about it," Asai said to her while his daughter fidgeted with the toy pony clutched in her tiny hands. It felt to Nan like he had seen something inside her that she'd been trying so hard to forget about, like a flash of gold on the muddy bottom of a lake. He just reached in and snatched it up, and handed it back to her as her own. "Anytime you feel like there's no one else who would understand, or believe you. I will."

* * *

 _Mother of the savior._

Ukyou might have laughed not long ago if anyone had suggested she, of all people, could ever be such a thing.

Now that she was here, in a Hell that undoubtedly existed, she had no choice but to believe. At least, to accept that was what her captors in this place truly believed her to be. And her unborn child—Tsuzuki's child—what was it to them, some sort of Antichrist, destined to bring the world to its knees?

 _They'll use it. From the moment it's born, they'll turn it against me. Against humanity._

Ukyou may not have had any control over her own escape from this prison, but this one thing she could still decide. She couldn't let them do that.

She was well acquainted with human anatomy. She knew where and how deep a puncture would get the job done.

But no amount of planning or deep breathing could have prepared her for the pain. The jagged bone that she'd found in the shadows of her cell—no telling who or what it had once belonged to, or who or what must have broken it in half to get at the marrow—felt as though it were splitting her apart.

And the blood—there was so much of it. She panicked, feeling shock set in much faster than she'd anticipated. Any strength she might have had to pull the bone out and try again was gone. All she could do was fall to her knees and wait for nature to take its course and her womb to abort its pregnancy. Whether she survived it or not, at this point she was beyond caring. What future was left for her at the end of this, anyway? Trapped in Hell for the rest of her natural life? Or a slow, excruciating death at the hands of sadistic demons? Better to go relatively painlessly from blood loss.

She was aware of her captors shouting for help. She heard their grotesque voices as though from a great distance, through a fog. Even as her blood streamed out of her, she could hear its surging in her ears, and let it lull her into a sort of half-sleep.

She was reluctant to leave it when the metal grating screeched open, and cold hands pulled her into a sitting position. The bone shiv was yanked from her body; she yelped as it pulled at her flesh, opening her wound further, and heard it clatter back into its corner.

"What have you done?" It was Focalor's voice that growled in her ear, his fingers that gripped her jaw until she had no choice but to open her eyes, peer into his pale face.

"It's too late." A weak laugh escaped her when she saw his terror. _His_ terror. The master he kept talking about, threatening her guards with—Focalor would feel his wrath now. At least Ukyou could die believing he would go down with her, for failing to prevent this. "I've killed it, your _savior_." It was better this way, better it never be born than whatever fate they had in store for it."I'm not letting you use a _child_ for your evil purposes."

The devil's lips curled back in barely contained rage, tugging at the ruined flesh of his cheek. Though she still felt ill at the sight of him, it didn't much matter to Ukyou what he did now.

His eyes shifted down to her wound. And then, to Ukyou's surprise, he grinned. "Sorry, Doctor, but it seems that choice isn't yours to make."

"What?" He released her, and she found to her surprise that she had no problem sitting up on her own. The wound in her belly was fading to a dull, stinging ache, the pain in her womb no worse than a bad cramp. Ukyou prodded the skin around the incision—lifted her sweater when, alarmingly, she couldn't find the wound.

It was still there, but only just. Healing itself beneath her fingertips, stopping the flow of blood. She could almost imagine she felt the heartbeat of the child still growing inside her, beating strong, defiant.

And she remembered Tsuzuki's hand. How it had mended itself while she watched. How he had seemed ashamed of what she'd thought then to be a blessing.

Only now did she fully understand. It was a curse. One his child had inherited. Its own biology wouldn't let her kill it. And now its cells ran through her veins, repairing any damage that might compromise its own safety. It wouldn't let its host die so easily. Not while it still needed her.

Focalor stood back and gave Ukyou her space as the hopelessness of her situation sank in and she broke down. He would never have pegged her as capable of such an act, but desperate times . . . It had been a mistake to keep her in this dank cell, guarded by only a few incompetent lower demons, whose faces must have seemed to her like some endless nightmare. A few pillows and a comfortable bed were not enough to make a mortal's existence here livable. He would have to use his imagination if he wanted to avoid a repeat of this.

After all, he couldn't guarantee that Ukyou wouldn't try to take her life or the baby's again. Or that she would be just as unsuccessful a second time.

* * *

Keijou could hear their footsteps coming even before they banged on the bars of his cage. Just when he'd been about to fall asleep and forget he was in this literally God-forsaken place for a few blissful hours. He stubbornly kept his eyes closed, hoping he might trick the halfwit demon into giving up and going away.

"Wake up, shinigami. I have a job for you."

 _That_ voice was new. It wasn't as repulsive as the usual crew that came to tease and insult him.

Keijou studied his guest through a cracked eyelid. This one _looked_ human, at least, even if he wasn't in the best shape. With his slightly stooped shoulders, shaggy white hair, and doe eyes, Keijou didn't see anything about him that commanded his respect, let alone his obedience. "I don't negotiate with demons," he muttered, and tried to get more comfortable on his granite-slab cot.

"And I wasn't asking," said the other.

Okay. Something about him intrigued Keijou. He didn't sound like the others, who barely had a brain cell to share between them. For that matter, the sheer power in his voice didn't match his meek exterior. If for no other reason than his novelty, he was worth hearing out. "What's this job?" Keijou said, eyes open, turning his head to face him.

Focalor didn't bother to hide his grin. Humans were all alike, whether they were alive or dead. Curiosity was how he got this vessel—and the one before that. "I thought you didn't negotiate."

"And you made it sound like I didn't have a choice. So maybe I'd like to know what kind of torture you've got in store for me before we get going. That is what you do to people here, isn't it?"

"This isn't torture," Focalor told him as he slipped his hands into his jacket pockets. That was to say, what Focalor had planned wasn't intended as torture. Whatever Ukyou chose to make it for the shinigami was up to her. "You might have heard rumors of a mortal woman being kept in the city."

Keijou rose to his feet, taking a step towards the devil. "Maybe." He hadn't, but the fact that there was one sounded unusual, and therefore suspicious. "You want me to take her soul or something? Because, I hate to break it to you, but I'm not that kind of shinigami."

"I wasn't aware there was any other kind. But no, I don't want you to take her soul. I want you to keep her company."

Now, _this_ was just too rich to be true. "You can't be serious."

"Can't I? As I understand it, human beings require the company of other humans. Or else they start to go mad, do reckless things—things which we cannot have her do. If you follow me."

"I follow." At least, Keijou followed that this mortal woman, whoever she was, could finally be his ticket out of this place. "I can keep her company."

"And safe. This mortal is very important to some very powerful players. I need assurances that if I let you near her, you won't try to use her as a hostage to negotiate your own release from here."

Did this guy read minds? Damn, but Keijou should have known better than to put that past any resident of Hell. He should have remembered from training. Mind-reading practically came standard on the higher demons, and particularly the fallen angels, the devils. It was much of the reason they were so successful at convincing mortals to do their bidding. They had a talent for wheedling out just what it would take to make a soul cave.

"Like I said," Keijou gritted out, trying to put a lid on his thoughts and wishing he'd focused more on that area of self-defense, "I don't negotiate with the likes of you. Assured now?"

"You'd be a fool to try it. In any case, as a shinigami, you took an oath not to harm a human being who is not already slated to die, or who poses no existential threat to the lives of others—"

"You make me sound like a freakin' robot. . . ."

"Did I get that wrong?" But Focalor didn't need confirmation. Unlike Keijou, he had done his homework. He didn't care that his smugness about that showed, either. "See, I stake more confidence in those little built-in safety features of yours than I do in the mere _word_ of something that was once human itself, and therefore prone to lie. Of course, the vows you took only apply while under Enma's jurisdiction, and there's no telling whether you would in fact be determined in violation of them if you decided to take Dr. Sakuraiji's fate into your own hands—"

"Sakuraiji?" The smile fell from Keijou's face. " _She's_ the human? You have her _here_?"

Then he really had no idea after all. _Curiouser and curiouser._ "You know her."

"I know _of_ her. I was at her house. We had Tsuzuki surrounded, he was holed up inside. But we were attacked by traitors. Things got out of hand. The roof caved in—"

"You had no idea she survived." And probably no idea she was pregnant, and carrying that Tsuzuki's child. Oh, Focalor would have to make sure he was there for this introduction, and that he brought popcorn.

Keijou gripped the adamantine bars of his cell in both hands. The charge that surged through him on contact burned like a steady electric current, but he wanted to feel it. To prove to himself, and to this devil, his determination. "I'll do it," he said. "I'll keep her company. Anyway, it'll give me something to wake up for other than staring at these three walls all day."

"And you'll keep her from harm? Either at her own hand or another's?"

"I will. You have my word. It's what I was made a shinigami to do in the first place. And that's a promise you can take to the bank."

Good, thought Focalor, I look forward to cashing that check. If the shinigami was so easy to convince this time, how much of a challenge would Focalor face when he needed a _real_ favor?

* * *

It seemed everyone in Summons was relieved to return to their own sectors. Not to mention relieved that the souls they were to reap weren't those they secretly felt had earned a reprieve from death. Though the majority of shinigami had met their ends early in life and violently, there was a part of them that envied their recent cases. Perhaps _because_ so many of them had died early and violently.

Hisoka sensed it, though he couldn't say he shared the sentiment. He had been on both sides, being the victim of such evil and violence, only to suffer for three years in a hospital bed until the pain of his daily existence finally killed him. Death was death. Unless you went instantaneously, unable to see it coming, he couldn't see that there was any way of going out that was better than another.

He couldn't say he was surprised by how quickly things returned to normal in the Summons office, either. Only a day later and Tatsumi was already making the rounds among their desks, handing down new files with new souls to collect.

"Ah, Takehara. Poltergeist in a high school drama club," Terazuma said with mock excitement, leaning his chair back on two legs with his feet propped on a waste bin, clicking a piece of hard candy against his teeth. "Great. Looking forward to it."

"I am, actually," Wakaba said as she peeked at the details. "This is a lot more in my wheelhouse than what we've had in a long time. Besides, Hajime, I thought you liked dressing up as teacher. . . ."

The salacious look she shot him elicited just the response she'd been going for. Terazuma turned bright red, nearly choked on the candy when his ankles slipped off the rim of the bin, and spun in his chair. He coughed, "Not the appropriate place, Kannuki!"

Over by the windows, Saya and Yuma looked like two mischievous chipmunks covering their laughter.

Tatsumi had not forgotten about them, though. "How does a member of a famous boy band holding on for one more tour sound to you two?"

The women's eyes lit up. "For real?!" squealed an incredulous Yuma, while Saya grabbed the file right out of his hands and tore it open.

Tatsumi enjoyed a good chuckle at that. Even more so when their dream of a romantic encounter with a young heartthrob straight out of a girls' anime died on their faces. "Aw, you didn't say it was a thirtieth anniversary tour!" Saya complained.

"Guess it's back to Kyushu for you and me, Kurosaki," Natsume said while the two of them sat before their respective computer screens. K, who was curled up on his lap, looked up at that and gave him a tired little meow. "And you, too, of course, K-kun. Mm-mm, I can taste the _mizutaki_ now!"

"Better get it to go," Tatsumi said as he passed their desk. "No new assignments for you two today."

Which was just as well, Hisoka thought. In addition to their last cases, they had reports on their actions at Sakuraiji Pharmaceuticals to write up. They would be lucky if they were allowed to get through the extra paperwork without the distraction of a new summons.

Speaking of unwelcome distractions, Endo from Peacekeeping chose that moment to rap on Summons's open door and stick his head in.

"Hey, Kurosaki," he said once he was sure he had most of the office's attention, "just wanted to thank you for the other night. It's refreshing to see that some people around here can still see reason and put their past behind them, do the right thing. Maybe you can impress some of your cooperative spirit on the rest of your department and they'll be as obliging as you in the future."

For a second, Hisoka thought Endo must have just remembered things incorrectly. It was Natsume who had been so insistent on Peacekeeping overseeing the chain of custody of evidence, a fact which Hisoka had personally informed Endo of.

Which could only mean he had some other reason for saying what he did now, where all Hisoka's colleagues, not least of them Natsume, could witness him being on friendly terms with a Peacekeeper. Not to mention, with that smug, crooked grin on his lips, Hisoka couldn't make himself believe Endo had simply misremembered. This had to be personal.

"Oh yeah," Endo said, as though it had just occurred to him, "I knew there was another reason I came down here. I wasn't sure if you'd heard yet, but in case you hadn't, I thought you might like to know Akiyama's dead."

Natsume bolted out of his chair. "What?"

"I know! That was fast, right?" Endo grinned. He said to Natsume, "Just think if you'd put some money on it, like I suggested to your partner here. You might've been able to buy yourself a suit from this century."

Crouched on the edge of the desk with her ears back, K growled. Hisoka could feel Natsume's temperature rising as well, as if someone had just turned a kotatsu on under their desk. But it wouldn't do to let the Peacekeeping officer see him lose his cool. That was just what Todoroki would have wanted him to do.

Trying with all his might to sound as though he weren't bothered by the news, Hisoka said, "What happened?"

Endo shrugged. "Stepped in front of a train during the morning commute. Not too original, really. Leaves a huge mess. But it gets the job done."

Someone should have told him that flippant jokes about how people offed themselves didn't go over well in Summons as a whole.

Natsume's wasn't the only blood pressure getting a boost from the new arrival, either. "Was there anyone with her?" with icy calm, Tatsumi voiced the question that was on Hisoka's lips.

"Nope. Apparently she said at her trial it was all her idea. Don't know why there would have to be someone else anyway. It's like I told you. Types like that, they lose their life's work in an instant, no reason to drag it out."

"I only ask because you sound as though you were quite confident this would happen, a full day ahead of time. It's almost enough to make one wonder if you didn't have a hand in the young woman's death yourself, Mr. Endo."

"Well, lucky for me, I have an air-tight alibi. Just ask my chief." Sensing the growing hostility in the office—and, no doubt, a deepening of the shadows—Endo shoved off the door frame to leave. But he couldn't help one more jab when he caught sight of Nonomiya by the printer. "Summons looks good on you, Nonomiya," he called, winking. "Maybe you should make it permanent."

"Hey!" Terazuma barked, sitting up straight. "Why don't you leave her alone."

It was the wrong thing to say. Anything would have been. It would have been better if he hadn't drawn attention to himself.

Endo feigned a double-take, and laughed. "Wait—is that you, Terazuma? Oh-ho, man! Hardly recognized you since you look so, you know . . . so _human._ "

With a scowl on her face, Wakaba grabbed the stapler off her and Terazuma's desk and chucked it at Endo. It might have hit, too, if Endo hadn't been so quick to dodge, and in the end only took a sizable chunk out of the side of the door frame he'd been leaning against.

She wasn't the only one enraged to action, either. Using some colorful language to suggest what Endo could go do with himself and his relations, Natsume leaped to the door, and slammed it in the Peacekeeper's face.

Looking around at his colleagues, Hisoka could sense that a few of them had wanted to do quite a bit more to the man. K couldn't help twitching her tail and hissing even after Endo was gone. But it was the suddenness of Natsume's outburst that unsettled Hisoka. Since they had been partners, he had shown himself to be quite unflappable, even in the face of clear and present danger. Startling what a little bit of harmless mean-spiritedness was able to bring out in him.

"Don't listen to him, Kochou," Saya said in a small voice in the silence that followed.

But Nonomiya waved it off, insisting she was fine.

"Endo's a bully," Terazuma said to no one in particular. "Always has been, always will be. You can't take anything he says seriously. I'm beginning to think the only reason Todoroki has kept him around all these years is for intimidation, because God knows he's shit at keeping the peace."

It didn't take an empath to see how fragile her cheery, flight-attendant smile was, however, when Nonomiya said through her teeth, "Maybe he does have a point, though. I'd rather call myself a Summons officer than be thought of in the same category as _him_ for the rest of my afterlife." And who could blame her if she didn't want to go back to work with someone as toxic as that?

"I don't buy it for one second," Hisoka said. "I was there last night. I met Akiyama. There was nothing remotely suicidal about her."

"People can change in a few hours," Natsume said, as he returned, still trembling with anger, to his desk.

But Hisoka shook his head. "I'm telling you, she didn't come off that way at all. If anything, she wanted revenge on us for ruining her career and killing her patients. She wanted to prove she could overcome this setback and keep helping people. She was planning for the future—months, years from now. People who plan that far ahead usually aren't thinking of taking their own lives the next morning."

"You could feel all that?" said a distraught Yuma.

At which a troubling shadow passed over Tatsumi's features.

"Endo said no one was with her," said Saya, but in such a way that Hisoka knew she was only trying to be helpful. "If she wasn't suicidal, then what? She tripped? Someone brainwashed her and remote-controlled her off the platform?"

"Yes! I mean, it's entirely possible. I've seen Muraki hypnotize people into doing much more complicated things. Isn't it possible someone could have wanted Akiyama silenced before news of what she was doing got out—especially someone like him?"

Whether it was the mention of Muraki's name or something else, that was Tatsumi's cue to interrupt. "Can I see you in private, Kurosaki?"

They used the conference room, Tatsumi shutting the blinds after shutting the door.

He didn't mince words. "You really think Muraki is behind this suicide?"

He didn't ask because he doubted it himself. More that he dreaded that Hisoka would only confirm what he already feared. "I seem to recall more than once people around here reminding me I suspect Muraki too quickly."

"But that is your opinion?"

Hisoka sighed. "It's complicated. When we interviewed Akiyama at her office, she said she had no involvement with Muraki, and I had no reason to believe she was lying."

"You mean, empathically."

"Yes. But now . . . She wouldn't have killed herself," he insisted, as though if he just repeated it enough times, someone other than himself might help share the burden of his conviction. "I'm telling you, Tatsumi, she wasn't the kind of person who even considers it an option. Someone must have given her a push. If not physically, then at least they put the urge in her head. It's the only explanation that makes sense. Besides, it would be just like Muraki to do something like this to punish us for interfering. Or, that's how he would see it, anyway."

Tatsumi hummed and nodded slowly. It seemed Akiyama's fate or Muraki's possible involvement were not what particularly interested him, however. "Your powers of empathy are getting stronger, aren't they? Ever since your accident?"

 _Where did this come from?_ But Hisoka gave it some thought. He must have been acting differently enough lately for someone like Tatsumi, who was usually content to mind his own business, to pick up on it, let alone think it was important enough to mention. "It's not as easy to ignore other people's thoughts as it was before Rikugou blew up on me. If that's what you're asking, then, yeah, I guess they're stronger." _Even if my control over them seems to have gotten weaker._

But there was more to it than that, more that Hisoka was hesitant to say, because he was hesitant to think of what it might mean for himself. "Sometimes I can pick out words. Specific thoughts. I wasn't able to do that before without touching the person I was reading—unless they were _feeling_ a word as well as thinking it. My powers have always been limited to feelings before."

"Do you think this new ability could have come from your connection to your shiki? I was given to understand that a bleed-through effect of that nature can sometimes happen, even with non-parasitic types."

Hisoka wasn't sure, so he didn't answer. He didn't recall anything about mind reading in Rikugou's repertoire of powers. Also, there was something Tatsumi wasn't telling him. Something he was trying very hard, and succeeding at not letting Hisoka read.

"You said you were able to tell whether Akiyama was lying," he said instead. "Do you find that to be the case generally, or only with her?"

"It's not just her," said Hisoka. That much was clear. "Though I wouldn't say I'm an effective lie detector, either. It all depends on how badly someone is trying to hide or expose the truth. And as for _what_ they're lying about, that's still beyond my abilities. Unless I can get close enough to touch them, that is."

When Tatsumi let out a relieved breath and ran a hand through his hair, Hisoka had to pry: "What's this all about? You think the mole in our department is still active?" They never figured out who was passing information to Peacekeeping before—or, for that matter, if their suspicions that someone was were correct—but now that Agrippina and Keijou were no more, and the two departments were ostensibly enjoying a new period of open communication, it no longer felt like an issue of any importance.

That was, until this new development with Akiyama, and Peacekeeping learning about her death so quickly. Just how had Endo come by that information so quickly? Had Judgment passed it down, hoping word would get back to Summons in the worst way possible? There were certainly individuals within the Judgment Division who wouldn't mind seeing Summons receive some sort of comeuppance.

 _Or did one of us pass it on? Is that what Endo was trying to tell us by rubbing the news in our faces?_

"The mole? . . ." Tatsumi shook his head, massaging a temple. "To tell you the truth, I had almost forgotten that business, after everything that happened around Sakuraiji's house and these cases that I thought might never end. It's been a rather hectic month, Kurosaki."

"I can keep looking if you want. See if I can find out who it is."

"Or _was,_ as the case may be."

"What, you don't think they'd stop just because Tsuzuki is in Muraki's clutches now, do you?"

Tatsumi sighed. And it seemed to Hisoka that the same thought had occurred to him more than once. "No, they probably would not. That is, if I wasn't just being paranoid and imagining the whole thing to begin with. I don't know. But it couldn't hurt to look into it. Chief Konoe and I agree this 'new era of cooperation and transparency' between us and Peacekeeping is likely little more than a ploy to lull us into lowering our defenses, and I refuse to humor it. What _is_ clear to us is that either Todoroki wants to know everything that's going on in this department, or someone he's working with does, and I can't stand to think that he managed to convince one of us it's in their best interest to spy against their own colleagues."

"Couldn't he get everything he needs from Nonomiya?" But Hisoka already suspected the answer to that.

"No," said Tatsumi. "I trust she's been discreet. That's why her chief no longer trusts her. He will be looking for evidence that she's only telling him what _we_ want him to hear. And if there is an active mole in our department, he will only confirm Todoroki's suspicions about Nonomiya. She has just as much to lose from this as any of us."

"Then, finding out who that person is should still be a priority."

"Only if you can spare the time to look into it. Off the record, of course." Though it felt to Hisoka that, despite what Tatsumi wanted him to hear on the surface, there was a deeper meaning to his words. It almost felt as though he were projecting his true wishes—broadcasting a clear go-ahead in his thoughts, knowing only Hisoka would receive the signal. "For now, though, I believe you have a report to finish?"

"Of course," Hisoka said pointedly, knowing Tatsumi would catch his _Roger_ in it.

When Hisoka left the conference room, Natsume was no longer at his desk. Nor anywhere to be seen. K was missing as well.

"Did Natsume say where he was going?" Hisoka asked his closest neighbors, Terazuma and Wakaba, interrupting their quiet conversation.

Terazuma was no help whatsoever. "Hey, it's none of my business. He's not _my_ partner."

Wakaba just rolled her eyes at him. "He might have mentioned something under his breath about getting some air," she told Hisoka. "You saw how worked up Endo got him. It wouldn't surprise me if he's looking for something to punch or somewhere to scream without any witnesses."

"Maybe he just snuck out for a cigarette. Not a bad idea right about now, actually."

That earned Terazuma the usual chiding, something about kissing an ashtray that made the former detective's ears turn pink. Since _that_ was none of _his_ business, Hisoka sank into his chair with a sigh and tried to refocus on the paperwork in front of him.

Yet the more he thought about it, the more uneasily it sat with him. They didn't have a case, so it wasn't like Natsume had ditched him. Still, that he would take off with hardly a word right after blowing up so uncharacteristically in Endo's face . . .

Everyone had a breaking point, Hisoka told himself, and Endo sure seemed talented at figuring out what that was. But he couldn't help thinking about what the Peacekeeper had told him two nights ago, at Sakuraiji's office. _Natsume's not your friend. He isn't anyone's friend. He's a freak. Him and that partner of his._ It would be just like Endo to try to drive a wedge between them, and therefore Hisoka would be better off not taking anything he said too seriously. Not to mention, Natsume and K both had a habit of coming and going from Summons whenever they wanted, and Hisoka had never felt like he needed an explanation for it before.

And yet. . . . What if Endo _had_ been serious? What if those words had been meant as a genuine warning to Hisoka?

And who the hell was this other partner? _Was he talking about Tsuzuki?_ Because as far as Hisoka knew, until just a few months ago, Natsume had only ever had one partner before the higher-ups realized he wasn't Summons material and moved him.

When he really thought about it, Hisoka realized he knew next to nothing about Natsume—not only who he was now, but what he'd been in life, what he had done in his brief first go-around as a shinigami for Summons.

And now, when he was as emotionally vulnerable as Hisoka had yet to see him, was perhaps as good an opportunity as Hisoka could hope for to find out. His defenses would be down. And Hisoka was prepared to listen, whether Natsume felt like talking or not.

"Fresh air does sound good right now," he said to no one in particular as he grabbed his jacket off his chair, and hurried out the door.

* * *

 _Where have I seen him before? Where, where, where. . . ._

The question ran circles round Imai's head until it almost became a song. Which would have been just what he needed: an honest-to-goodness ear-worm as bad as the one he was trying to get rid of: the mystery of why Kurosaki Hisoka seemed so damn familiar.

While Imai was tapping his pencil and trying unsuccessfully to concentrate on his computer screen, Endo came striding into the office, all cocksure and whistling a tune in a nonchalant way that no one was buying. He hadn't been able to fool Imai for one minute ever since they'd met. In life, Imai had put away plenty of assholes who thought they were too clever to get caught, and Endo had all the hallmarks of one of them.

 _And here he comes to pour a cup of coffee._ (And why, oh why, Imai wondered, did he have to be stuck at the desk closest to the coffee machine? Was it a new guy, hazing thing? See how he functioned with people constantly passing by his desk, looking over his shoulder?) _A thousand yen he's gonna shake that packet of sugar like it owes him money._

"Anyone care to guess who I just ran into down in Summons?" Endo said as though everyone within earshot actually cared, while he poured himself a cup of coffee. Then proceeded to shake the sugar packet like it did him wrong before tearing it open.

"And how is our Nonomiya doing?" said another of their coworkers, one who was actually quite decent in Imai's opinion, and entirely too generous when it came to entertaining Endo's delusions of his own grandeur.

 _Another day in paradise,_ Imai thought sardonically.

"Oh, you know," said Endo. "Another day in paradise." And Imai rolled his eyes. Not only was Endo a Class-A asshat, he was a laughably predictable one. Why did guys like him always have to say that? And ruin a perfectly good Phil Collins song for everyone. . . .

He happened to look over at Kazuma, and it didn't escape him how tightly her jaw was clenched, or the murderous look in her eyes as she avoided looking in Endo's direction. Imai was missing something there, but whatever it was, it was clearly none of his business.

"Hey, Sempai?" he said to her in a low voice, hoping not to bring anyone's attention to himself but hers. It was strange after so many years of being the _sempai_ himself to use the word again, particularly with a woman he probably had ten years on.

It did the trick. Kazuma glanced over at him, forgetting for the moment at least to resent Endo's very existence. "What's up?"

"I was wondering—well, you see, this Kurosaki thing is driving me nuts. But I figured, he works in Summons, right? Which is kind of like some sort of welfare agency in the living world, from what I can tell? Well, I'm assuming the cases he worked on have to be on record somewhere. Is there some way I might be able to search them—just the Kumamoto ones, of course, to see if any of them jog any memories?"

It was a long shot. Imai guessed that much the longer it took her to contemplate the question.

He was prepared to be shot down. A little less prepared—though pleasantly surprised—when she said, "I think that's doable, actually. I know who to put in a request with, in any event."

"That's it? You're not going to tell me I don't have the proper clearance or that I lack the seniority or something?"

Maybe it was Endo's influence, or maybe she liked Imai more than she let on. Kazuma laughed, and said just a little bit mischievously, "You're in Todoroki's Peacekeeping Division now, Detective. We here don't know the meaning of this thing you call 'proper clearance'."

* * *

So much for getting fresh air. There was no sign of Natsume among the cherry trees, or in any of the meticulously landscaped areas that served as natural spaces outside the Judgment Bureau's network of offices. No one Hisoka ran into had seen him hanging around the cafeteria or library—though Gushoushin the Younger felt eager to help as much as he could.

Though the ethics of it struck him as a little fuzzy, Hisoka decided to take a chance: "Hey, Gushoushin? By any chance, did you have any interaction with Natsume back when he and Tsuzuki were partners?"

"Well, that was a long time ago . . ." the little bird-man began, clearly reluctant to go down this line of conversation. Even if Hisoka hadn't been empathic, he would have recognized it as a dodge. The Gushoushin may have been ancient, but Enma wouldn't have put them in charge of an entire library of human lives and deaths if they had short memories. "He didn't really come around here much after he was transferred to Accounting, either. No reason to, really."

"Accounting? I thought he was in Billing."

"Oh, he is. Now. His chief at the time determined that might be a little more his speed. Harder to mess up, lower security clearance." Then, as if realizing he had said too much, Gushoushin shut his beak with a little snap. "But you're his partner. You must know all this already."

"No. You'd think someone would have told me this sort of thing when we were assigned to each other, though, wouldn't you? You know, as a courtesy."

"Well, seeing as you're the only one who's ever lasted for more than a few months as Tsuzuki's partner, maybe they thought you had some special insight into how to handle Mr. Natsume."

"How to _handle_ him? How exactly did their partnership end?"

"How does _any_ partnership with Tsuzuki end?" But Gushoushin had apparently reached his limit of what he deemed safe to say. "Sorry, Hisoka. You don't deserve that. Not after what happened to Tsu— Well, I'm sure it wasn't your fault, in any case. You tried your best with what was a pretty unfair situation from the beginning.

"And this is all really none of my business. If you're so curious, why don't you ask Natsume himself?" he said with a rather forced tone of cheerfulness. " _You're_ his partner."

So Hisoka kept being reminded. Yet it would help if he knew where Natsume _was_ if he was to ask him anything.

They weren't much help in Billing either. The few people to be found in that labyrinth of cubicles hadn't seen Natsume for at least a few days. Though they were eager to finally meet the mysterious Kurosaki who was their friend's new partner in person.

Natsume hadn't been kidding when he said the place was like a purgatory within purgatory. Underground, fluorescent instead of natural light, a faint and ubiquitous aroma of toner on the air. _Way_ more cubicles than there were bodies to fill them, as though Enma had been planning for some financial crisis that had yet to happen.

Natsume's colleagues must not have had much of a life outside the office and their homes, because they spoke of Hisoka's exploits more like he was a character in some drama than a guy who worked upstairs in another department. If this was the environment Natsume was working in day in and out, Hisoka had a little more sympathy for him. Even the most gregarious person would become a bit socially awkward after a year's confinement here, let alone decades'. Treating a pet cat like it was a person seemed like a rather understandable and healthy way to deal with the loneliness, come to think of it.

But along with that sympathy came a wave of suspicion. This was exactly the sort of environment where someone could have a secret life and their coworkers be none the wiser. And Natsume had a reputation as something of a computer genius. From a place like this, he could reach into any database he could hack his way into, take his pick of the Judgment Bureau's most classified documents. Not to mention, send secure e-mails or even talk openly on the phone with anyone he wanted, with no one to look over his shoulder.

All at once it snapped into place for Hisoka.

Tatsumi trusted Natsume, enough to bring him in on secret meetings regarding their search for Tsuzuki. And Natsume had been quite frustrated when Tatsumi hadn't taken his suggestions for hardening their digital security seriously. If he had, surely Natsume would have been the one overseeing Summons's security upgrades. As it was, Tatsumi had practically handed Natsume the opportunity and material to report back to Todoroki's agents.

And then there were all the times he had conveniently disappeared just before Summons's confrontations with Peacekeeping.

Not least among which at the Castle of Candles, when Natsume had aided in Hisoka and the chief's escape, only to part ways from them in the tunnels so he could get advance word back to Tatsumi. What if, after he had done that, he had also warned Keijou and Agrippina of their plans? He would have had plenty of time to get a message through. And it was uncanny how close on Hisoka's tail those two had been, arriving at Ukyou's house in Tokyo—with reinforcements—only minutes after him and Konoe.

Now that Hisoka looked back on it, it all matched up so perfectly. And none of them had even suspected that a former partner of Tsuzuki's would be working against Summons. No one had suspected, that is, except Terazuma, and he only for a brief spell. And who would have blamed him? Terazuma knew better than anyone that being Tsuzuki's partner didn't usually endear one to him; but any protestations against Natsume's being included in their inner circle would have been passed off as just that: misplaced bitterness about his own past with Tsuzuki.

Natsume would only need to point that out, win Terazuma over to his side—both of which he had done—and his loyalty would continue to go unquestioned, and unchallenged.

Hisoka could have kicked himself. He should have seen it—he should have _felt_ it at very least! _This is about revenge. Revenge against Tsuzuki, for whatever happened between them. That must be why he's doing this, why he would work with Peacekeeping when he clearly hates them. All he had to do was wait for an opportunity to present itself to set it all in motion. God—how long has he been planning this?_

However long Natsume's scheme had been in the works, it would end today. There was one place Hisoka suspected he might find his partner, someplace deep underground that few even knew existed. If he was right, they could speak openly there without any fear of eavesdroppers.

Or witnesses, should Hisoka be forced to take physical action. He had to be prepared for a confrontation, in case it came to that. Though Hisoka hoped Natsume would see the sense in turning himself in peacefully, he knew he could not count on it.

The Lake of Fire roiled like the surface of the sun caught in an indoor Olympic swimming pool-sized enclosure, casting its hellishly glowing orange wave shadows over everything. Hisoka could feel the oppressive heat of it rolling over him the moment he stepped out of the elevator.

And sure enough, there on the lake's bank stood Natsume, patiently wiping the steam from his glasses. "Oh, hello, Kurosaki," he said without looking up, a note of resignation in his voice. "Should have known you'd figure out my hiding spot. I guess there's no putting this conversation off any longer, is there?"


	9. Deny everything

**Author note:** _More b.s. manga science coming your way! :D_

* * *

The files sat on the dining room table as though begging him to grasp some great revelation from them.

But no immediate significance jumped out at Tsuzuki from what pages he could even begin to understand. And he was getting more than a little irritated, being forced to guess what Muraki was up to all the time with only the barest of information granted to him. "Just tell me what I'm supposed to be looking at."

"These were given to me by a colleague of Ukyou's. Proof of what they were able to accomplish at their laboratories, should anything unfortunate occur."

Muraki did not pace. He leaned against the window sill, backlit by the sun, staring gravely at Tsuzuki, yet there was an impatience in his tone. And somehow Tsuzuki felt like the one pulling teeth. "And that is?"

"To cure the incurable, and bring people back from the brink of death. She was able to save dozens of lives by utilizing a new gene therapy. A virus, reprogrammed to implant and replicate key strands of your DNA in the recipient's T-cells, thereby turning them into super-repairing machines."

Tsuzuki shook his head. "I don't believe it."

Yet, at the same time, he did. Nor did he need the hard copies in front of him to convince him. It seemed to him now that this had been coming for quite some time.

"Why not?" Muraki said with a small smile, and Tsuzuki could already guess what he was going to say. "It's not so different from what my grandfather was trying to accomplish half a century ago—though his methods seem like so much fumbling in the dark when compared to what progress we've been able to make with today's technology. It's no wonder he met with little success in his time when one considers the tools to which he was limited. As a result, most of his patients went mad when subjected to your genetic material—if they survived his experiments."

"If they survived? He didn't just inject them with my blood, too?"

"Oh, that was just the beginning. You would be amazed what variety of uses he found for your cells. Even I was not his and Father's first attempt at creating a child of your blood. If you could see for yourself what horrors their failures took the form of, you would be surprised my mother remained as sane as she did."

While Muraki said this, the smile remained planted firm on his lips. Only as he mentioned his mother did Tsuzuki realize that what he had first taken as a sign of Muraki's amusement and intellectual interest, was inextricably tangled with disgust and an old anger. Perhaps Tsuzuki wasn't the only one who was ashamed of ever having been mixed up with Muraki Yukitaka.

"And from what I have been able to tell," the doctor went on, either unaware much of this was going over Tsuzuki's head or not caring, "Ukyou met with the same obstacles in her experiments with the tissue she had cloned from Grandfather's original samples. Her animal subjects became violent when subjected to your genetic material—attacking one another, or else harming themselves. Some simply refused to eat and perished of a lack of will to live. She did succeed in tweaking the DNA of certain plants, however, recoding them to produce flowers perpetually, but plants do not have minds to lose—at least, as far as we know.

"But then you came along—that is, you in your current, immortal shinigami form, and the two of you created a hybrid of your own, with the inhuman portion of your code intact. My grandfather lacked the ability to separate the cells of two individuals from one sample, but we live in a time capable of such amazing feats. Unbeknownst to Ukyou, her assistant was able to isolate the DNA of your child from a sample of her blood, and turn it into a wonder-drug."

Tsuzuki felt his blood run cold within him. "Wait a second. I thought we were talking about experiments using _my_ DNA. But you're saying the people in those files—" He gestured vaguely to the ones on the table in front of him, suddenly loth to touch them. "—they were injected with my _child's_?" And that child not even born. If it had the ability to cure while still in the womb, what might it be capable of when— _if_ , Tsuzuki reminded himself—it reached adulthood?

"But if you're my child, too—technically—why couldn't they just use yours?"

Muraki didn't move, only narrowed his eyes has he held Tsuzuki's. "Do you think I never tried that? No, it was something that child inherited that I did not—or perhaps something inextricably linked to your shinigami essence that the samples taken from you when you were alive—that is to say, the samples that made me—never possessed.

"Which makes this all rather serendipitous, wouldn't you agree? Just when your cells were about to be deemed insufficient to meet the aspirations of Sakuraiji Pharmaceuticals, a more effective donor was discovered. One could even say created, as if on command. Yes, your child. Yours and Ukyou's. A hybrid of a hybrid who somehow inherited _just_ the combination of genes to suit their purposes. It couldn't have worked out better if you two had planned it."

The way Muraki put it, Tsuzuki should have been repulsed by the whole notion, that mad science was being conducted on his own genetics, let alone an unborn baby's. But if he understood correctly what the results were, he couldn't find it in him to be upset, or even disgusted. "And this—this super-drug, is what this assistant you mentioned used to save people?"

Muraki's smile itched to spread wider. "Yes. It's amazing, isn't it? How many were convinced a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's would never be discovered in their lifetimes? And now this."

"And the patients who were cured? They're doing fine still—no sign of madness, or self-harm?"

Tsuzuki's desperate hope was clear in his eyes, or in his voice. It was not the reaction Muraki had been expecting, yet it could be useful. He pushed himself away from the window, stepping to the edge of the opposite side of the table. "There were no indications of madness," he said, measuring out his words, watching for the moment the cracks began to show. "None of the side effects that plagued Grandfather's research. However, _none_ of the patients your child's DNA was given to is still alive."

"It killed them?"

"Quite the contrary. It made them well—stronger than they had ever been in life. You have your shinigami friends to thank for their deaths."

Needless to say, Tsuzuki would rather it have been the drug. But he couldn't let Muraki see his disappointment, and use it against him. He kept the smile firmly on his lips as he said, "Well, if they took those people's lives, they must have had good reason to suppose they wouldn't fully recover."

"But they _were_ recovered, Tsuzuki. That is what I have been trying to explain to you."

Still, he shook his head. "If everyone who was near death was given another chance with my genes, no one would ever die and it would throw the living world out of balance—"

Tsuzuki jumped when Muraki slammed his palms down on the table, making even the porcelain dolls on the mantel rattle. Muraki hissed, "Don't tell me you actually _believe_ that horseshit!"

"It's not a matter of whether I believe in it!" Tsuzuki shot back. "Those people were scheduled to die and what your associate gave them was not a natural cure. It was something far worse than that—because _I_ am not a natural occurrence!"

"A moment ago you were pleased to hear what miraculous feats your blood was capable of." That Tsuzuki could not deny, though he hated that he had been so transparent about it. "Are you really going to tell me now that if it were up to you, you would still consign those people to death?"

Of course he wouldn't. They didn't deserve to be ripped away from the living world, so soon after receiving a second chance. It didn't matter how that second chance came about.

But that was beside the point, and surely Muraki understood that. It was Muraki, after all, who had made him see so clearly what a curse his existence was, and everything that had come of it. "It doesn't matter," Tsuzuki said, feeling the itching of tears behind his eyes that he was determined to keep there, "because that isn't my choice to make."

"Is it God's? Is that what you mean? Is it against God's will when a person is saved from a life-threatening injury? Why should a disease be any different?"

Tsuzuki cringed from his words. "That isn't what I meant—"

"Yet you defend the actions of your colleagues."

"Yes! I mean—you misunderstand. It isn't their choice, either! They're shinigami. We _have_ to do what we're _told—_ "

"Or what? You'll shut down, self-destruct? Be sent to a hell worse than an agency of murderers for hire?"

"It isn't murder," Tsuzuki tried feebly, but Muraki would not let up.

"And why not?" he said as he slowly moved round the table. "Because your hits are ordered by a _deity_? Is that what you tell yourself to justify what you do, Tsuzuki—to justify the need for your special set of skills?" He scoffed, but there was no humor behind it. " _Every_ action is a choice."

"You're one to speak about murder and choice!" Tsuzuki could feel his blood boiling in him now. Where a moment ago he had been filled with shame for what he was, Muraki's hypocrisy fueled a different sort of fire inside him, one not as saturated with self-loathing. One that actually felt good to let out. "At least when a shinigami takes a life it's for that person's own good, and after their allotted time is already up. _You_ take life because it suits you, or because it satisfies your curiosity to see someone in pain! The more innocent the better, isn't that right, Muraki? The more creative the torture you can put them through, the better. You never give a second thought to their feelings, or what's in their best interest. Only what's in yours. And you would stand there and insist I'm no different from you? You're a monster—"

"And what name would you give to one who drives another to suicide, as your shinigami colleagues did Ukyou's assistant?"

That riposte, uttered with such unmoved calm, took Tsuzuki aback. Shook him enough that he forgot what he had been about to say next. "What are you talking about?"

Muraki let out a long sigh as he came to stand beside Tsuzuki, his hands in his trouser pockets. Though Tsuzuki could not fool himself that Muraki ever hated being a bearer of bad news.

"The assistant, one Dr. Akiyama, threw herself in front of a train not long after being confronted by your shinigami friends."

"She's dead?" Of course she was, Tsuzuki chided himself. Why else would Muraki feel the need to rub his nose in this?

Which only roused Tsuzuki's suspicions further. He narrowed his eyes. "And what proof do I have that _you_ didn't push her in front of that train yourself? It wouldn't be much of a stretch for you."

"I never laid a finger on Ms. Akiyama."

"Yeah, well, I know you well enough to know you wouldn't have to."

If Tsuzuki had been expecting Muraki to crack a grin at being caught out, though, he would be disappointed. The doctor was as serious as ever. "Ms. Akiyama told me of her plans herself before she died. How the shinigami had robbed her of her reason to live when they took her research, her samples, her cure. Her patients. She felt responsible for those people's deaths herself, and for the pain she put them through. She had no idea at the time that her efforts to save them would be futile. For that matter, she suffered quite a shock just learning that shinigami exist. For a scientist, being shown proof that consciousness continues after death can cause quite a crisis of faith. If you are not already open to the idea, that is."

Tsuzuki couldn't deny that Muraki presented the reasoning behind her suicide in a neat little package. Still: "Why should I believe you that's how it happened? I have only your word to go on, and it's never exactly been reliable."

"Or is it," Muraki said in a lower voice, as his eyes searched Tsuzuki's from behind his glasses, "that you simply refuse to accept what deep down you know to be true: that your colleagues drove an innocent person to suicide?"

 _Never. Hisoka wouldn't allow it._

But Tsuzuki had to remind himself, Hisoka was gone. And he wasn't sure if he could imagine a Summons Division without him, one where Tatsumi and Terazuma, Wakaba and Saya and Yuma, could be cruel enough to a mortal to cause them to harm themselves like that. Sure, most of them probably wished unmentionable harm to Muraki, but Tsuzuki would hardly call him an innocent.

Yet, if he were honest with himself, he could remember times when rage had got the better of them. The better of Tsuzuki himself. How many innocent lives had he touched, affected, ended, if even unintentionally, through rash actions? Through outbursts of emotion, and powers he couldn't always control? Shinigami may have been born from the souls of human beings, but they were no longer human themselves. Possessed of all the weaknesses of their past lives, and a power to magnify them that they hadn't earned. And in their immortality, their displacement from time, sometimes they forgot how fragile life truly was, and how dangerous knowledge of Meifu could be. How terrifying to the living.

Still, that world was his world. And his old colleagues—Tsuzuki was reluctantly starting to get used to the idea that he may never see them again—they were his friends. The closest thing Tsuzuki had to family. "If there's any truth to how you claim it all happened," he said, "then maybe it's for the best."

"Tsuzuki, do you hear yourself—"

"From the sound of it, Akiyama was continuing your grandfather's work, and that can't be allowed to happen."

"So, taking her life before her allotted time is justified, as his was, because of the threat she posed to Enma's rule? For that matter, why drive her to suicide? By the same logic, your friends would be doing the world a favor if they had killed her outright!"

No, Tsuzuki wanted to say automatically, as he wanted to deny anything Muraki said while those cold, silver eyes bored into him. But the word died on his lips. Wasn't that precisely what he was arguing?

"You don't understand." The words felt like they had to be forced out—as though a war was being fought inside Tsuzuki's own soul, and he didn't know what side he was on himself. "People can't fight their fate. They can't escape death. I know it's a cruel system, I don't always agree with it, but that's the way things _are,_ and I have to believe there's a greater reason for that _._ Even if I wanted to, how could I possibly change that? What would the consequences be? Even if I could play God, how could I possibly choose which lives are worth saving? Why should anyone have that right?"

"Yet that is what you have done, every day of your existence as one of Enma's trained pets. Decide who lives, and who dies—"

"You're wrong. It's not up to me." If it had been, didn't Muraki think Tsuzuki would have done things differently? "All I do is follow orders." His whole career had been testament to that. Much as he'd tried to bend or skirt what was required of him every time, every time he was unable to change a person's fate. And the more he dug in his heels, the more pain he caused. He could not bear to ruin another undeserving life with his failure to do his duty. If that meant taking the lives of the unwilling-to-die, so be it. It was not for him to question the reason behind his orders.

And finally, the smile returned to Muraki's lips. "Then you are truly nothing but a weapon."

" _I am NOT a weapon!_ "

The files open on the table suddenly took flight, scattered to the far corners of the dining room as though shoved by an angry hand, though no one had touched them. The old chandelier hanging over them had not been turned on, but the bulbs inside it abruptly flared to brightness and burst, raining shards of glass like splinters on the table.

The loss of another antique. But this time, Muraki only watched in amusement. "You're right, of course," he said lightly, though his glare was daggers. "How silly of me. A weapon wouldn't do something like that at all."

The surge of power, though gone as suddenly as it had come on, still tingled in Tsuzuki's extremities, like a warm shot of liquor. He took a step back in chagrin for what he'd done, though no more than one; the crunch of glass under his feet made him suck in a trembling breath.

And Muraki's soft voice would give him no peace. If he had yelled, given Tsuzuki some anger to hold on to, that would have been kinder. "Do you never wonder why Enma has kept you around as long as he has? After all these mishaps of yours that have come to my attention over the brief time we've known each other—after all these years of your service that must have cost him dearly, have you never wondered why he would deny you your right to move on?"

"Because I killed myself." That was what Tsuzuki had always been led to believe anyway. "And taking your own life is one of the gravest sins there is."

"I see. In that case, why doesn't every suicide become a shinigami?"

Tsuzuki had no answer for that. None that he wanted to admit to himself, anyway, let alone to Muraki.

"Or could it be that he knew there was something different about you all along. Something special. Perhaps you gave him a clue to it when your first few attempts at ending your life failed. Perhaps even then he had the vaguest of inklings what you were capable of, what power you possessed. Or even, carried, latent, in your genes."

"If this is your roundabout way of asking me who my father was, I told you, I don't know. I _still_ don't know."

"But are you not curious, Tsuzuki? Would you not like to find out?"

And rather than dredge of up that old feeling of hopeless defeat that always came over Tsuzuki when he thought of his own father, what Muraki said next resonated with something deep inside Tsuzuki that he had thought gone since being brought to this place: "After all, whoever—or, let us be honest, _what_ ever your father was, he was not only responsible for you, but for me as well, and all the suffering that has followed in our wake. If you truly desire justice, for yourself, your friends, every soul you've ever touched with the sin of your nature—don't you want to know who is most to blame?"

* * *

The question turned in Tsuzuki's mind long after Muraki had left him. As he wandered the rooms of his prison, it plagued him. Who, or what, had made him? And was that all Enma had ever wanted him for—for his pedigree? His power? Did Enma even care how he suffered for his continued existence, so long as the God of Death got what he wanted out of the deal? Had he _ever_ cared?

How neatly it all fit together, now that Muraki had made him see that. No matter what Tsuzuki did, whether he chose to obey his shinigami nature or defy it, he could not find an explanation or justification for himself that could make him feel right, let alone righteous. No matter what he told himself to excuse his past, and all his deeds, he only felt more wrong.

Akiyama had been wrong. Everything Tsuzuki knew about the balance of life and death told him that. Yet if he had been in her position, known only what she knew, and held the power to heal the sick in the palm of his hand, could he say he would not have done the same thing? Was he really so different from her, when he granted reprieves to the dying, answered their final wishes? Pursued the justice that they were denied? He received his due reprimands for bending the rules to his liking; but what did he care? He was already dead. And that poor woman . . .

Well, even if she had to be stopped, he could not believe that she deserved to die for it, nor that anyone at Summons would have pushed her towards suicide. Not without drastic changes first taking place within the department since his disappearance, and Hisoka's destruction. He could tell himself that Konoe and Tatsumi would never have allowed it, but losing Hisoka might have been the final straw that made them forget their own humanity. For that matter, Tsuzuki had no idea if they were still in control of Summons, or if Enma had given it to some more sadistic denizen of Meifu—

No, he couldn't allow himself to think that way, to suspect his friends, the closest thing he had to a family in ninety years. To start doubting them—that was exactly what Muraki wanted. And Muraki lied.

He was also the only one who didn't treat Tsuzuki like the truth was something he couldn't handle.

But was it true?

 _Am I just a weapon? Is that all I've ever been?_

Something for Enma to unleash upon his enemies when it was convenient to him? Here Tsuzuki had thought it was all to serve out his due penance, or because he had twelve powerful shikigami at his beck and call if things in the field got dicey. When in reality, he was only there to be used.

Enma, the Judgment Bureau, Summons—they had been using him all along. And they had warned him that _Muraki_ would try to use him. What a joke.

Such a joke that Tsuzuki lashed out at the nearest breakable thing at hand. With a violent sweep of his arm, he sent the dolls propped up against each other flying off the side table. Even the way they clattered bonelessly against one another across their floor, their faces frozen in comical looks of childish shock, made it feel as though they were mocking him, accusing him of being a monster. He seized the closest one, a harlequin in green and orange satin, and threw it for all he was worth at the window on the other side of the room. The window suffered no harm, but the impact shattered the doll's porcelain face. The body fell anticlimactically to the floor.

As if a spell had broken, Tsuzuki came back to himself. His limbs shook as he pushed the hair out of his eyes, and made an effort to calm his breathing. He felt foolish for doing what he'd done. Even if he did despise those dolls, destroying them wouldn't make him feel any better. It wouldn't accomplish anything. It wouldn't fix his problems. If he had proved anything, it seemed, it was just the theory that a weapon was all he was.

But as he bent to pick up the broken pieces of the harlequin doll, something caught his eye. A button on the doll's suit that wasn't actually a button. It was a camera, with a big new crack through its lens.

The second doll broke with far less remorse on his part. The third even less so. They were not dolls anymore to Tsuzuki, no longer items that held any emotional value for their owner. They may as well have been nuts to be cracked, for all Tsuzuki cared—the shell of no consequence, only what was inside. He had only one question that he desperately needed answered, and only in breaking those dolls open would he find it, one way or another.

In one's bonnet he discovered a microphone. And across the inner back of more than one cracked skull, spells that Tsuzuki recognized from his decades of work with fuda. Spells to turn the dolls' eyes into little cameras themselves, so that some remote viewer might see everything they saw. And Tsuzuki had little doubt what he would find once he checked the dolls stationed around the other rooms of the apartment.

He hadn't been wrong when he'd felt like they were spying on his every move. He just hadn't known how right he was.


	10. Admit nothing

Hisoka could hardly believe his luck. Natsume was going to confess to spying on Summons for Todoroki, just like that? All that was needed all this time was someone to just put the pieces together and he would come clean?

 _No, it can't be that simple._ Natsume may have drifted about the office in an easy-going, disarming manner, but that didn't mean Hisoka had to allow himself to be disarmed by it. He had played along with it this long; this time Hisoka expected to get something in return for it. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

Natsume blinked. _As if he really doesn't know what he did._ "I was going to ask you the same thing. You're the one who followed me here, Kurosaki. What's on _your_ mind?"

Hisoka shrugged. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay." Sure, he could go with that angle, see where it led him. See if you really could catch more flies with honey. "Anyone could see that that Endo guy upset you. Not that there was a single one of us that didn't want to clock him ourselves." At that, Natsume chuckled a bit. "But I've never seen you so upset by a case as this last one."

Despite the chuckle, though, Hisoka could read nothing from him. He couldn't be sure if it was the Lake of Fire interfering with his empathy; the heat of it _was_ sufficiently distracting. This was just the sort of location someone who was guilty might choose to evade an empath's search for the truth.

"Come on, we haven't been together _that_ long," Natsume said. "Although, I guess I should have expected you of all people to pick up on that. I wasn't exactly subtle, was I? I hadn't had to interact with Endo in so many years I'd almost forgotten why I couldn't stand that asshole. Man, Todoroki's lackeys sure have a knack for knowing which buttons you _don't_ want them to push. Not my finest hour."

"What did he do to you?"

"Nothing," Natsume said. Then reluctantly amended, "Per se." He seemed to be struggling with himself before settling on: "He was just doing his job. I don't blame him for that. It's just sometimes you really wish someone would extend you the courtesy of pretending something never happened, instead of rubbing it in your face every chance they get?"

"You mean, something to do with this last case." Something flickered across Natsume's gaze for the briefest of moments, but it was enough to tell Hisoka he was on the right track. "I knew there was something different about this one, something that really got to you—"

"Anyone ever tell you how annoying this mind-reading thing of yours is?"

It was so automatic to correct people about how his empathy worked, Hisoka almost shot back that he couldn't read Natsume's mind. _If I could just get a hand on him, I'd know the truth whether he'd want me to or not._ But with the Lake of Fire just a good shove away, Hisoka didn't think he could risk it. He may have survived Rikugou's fire, by some means still unknown to him, but he wasn't so confident that any shinigami body could survive a dip in those waters. Or, if by some chance it could, not without significant pain and hardship, and he had only just finished recovering from his last injury.

Besides, another thought stopped him. It was something Zepar had said. The devil had been so sure that Hisoka had it within his power to manipulate others' emotions. If he could only learn how to do it. Hisoka's _go_ match in Gensoukai with Rikugou had been his first attempt to put the idea into practice, and he had managed to mislead the shikigami just enough to win his loyalty, if not the game. It hadn't been a true manipulation, but Hisoka had succeeded in projecting his own emotions just enough to have them be received by another mind, another soul—and to influence that mind just enough into giving Hisoka what he could use.

He could do that here, he thought. If he could rouse a feeling of enormous guilt from within himself—and it wasn't as though guilt was a foreign emotion to him; his relationship with Tsuzuki alone provided more than enough fuel for that fire—he might be able to aim it and project it onto Natsume. Perhaps it could be enough to compel him to tell Hisoka what he wanted to hear.

"You'll feel better if you just say it out loud," he tried. "Believe me. It's doesn't feel like it would be at first, but it's easier to let someone you trust help you bear the burden." Just like Hisoka had always made it worse for himself, when he bottled up his own pain inside, fearing that inevitable moment when it would all come bursting through the dam he built around his emotions. But he never learned. He always seemed to think he could master his feelings without any outside help, and so he always shut himself off, buried his feelings deep. . . .

Whatever was bothering Natsume, Hisoka could feel it just below his surface, like a lid about to boil right off its pot. Problem was, he wasn't sure how much more he could turn up the heat.

And Natsume's defenses just seemed to push back against him. "Trust you? No offense, partner, I like you, I do, but I think I know what makes me feel better a little better than you do. And I don't think we're to the point in our working relationship when we can pour out our deepest secrets to one another."

"But you came down here for a reason." Hisoka was fishing, but he had to. He never knew where he might feel a bite. "The Lake of Fire's supposed to be able to burn everything, right? But whatever's got you so upset, it's not a physical thing, an item. You can't just throw it in and get rid of it. You can't just run from what you're feeling."

There! He thought he felt a tug on the line, if only just a little one. Natsume furrowed his brow, turning away from Hisoka.

"Why not? I guess we all feel it from time to time, right?"

Here we go, Hisoka thought. _Confess. Just say the words. You won't feel better until you do._

"It just wasn't fair," Natsume said, meeting Hisoka's gaze squarely through his glasses. "Taking those people's lives, after they'd just managed to get free from their diseases. I don't care if it _was_ against their will. Who really wants to die that way, wasting away, in pain twenty-four/seven just waiting for it all to be over? After everything they'd been through—and through no fault of their own, I'm sure, even if you believe that 'karma from a past life' crap—for us to just . . . steal it all away again in an instant. . . . When I accepted Tatsumi's offer to come back and work for Summons in Tsuzuki's absence, I thought it would be just like old times. Only I'd forgotten what 'old times' actually entailed."

He shook his head, as though to clear it of some even older memory. "I'm not gonna lie to you, Kurosaki. This job may be necessary—and I get that we're doing this important, noble thing here and that it's our due penance and all—but it isn't fun. And if I had it in my power to just leave the people from this last string of cases alone, I would. That doesn't mean I think what Dr. Akiyama did was right. And I don't mean that I think she deserved to die for what she did, either—though I was _pissed_ at her for putting us in the position we were in, of having to undo her damage. Or _un-_ damage, as the case may be. It's only that I can't see how what she did and what we do is really all that different, when you really get down to the nutmeat of it. And yet the ones who always end up paying for it are the ones who deserve it the least."

Hisoka didn't know what to say. For all he could tell, there had been no guile in Natsume's confession, and Hisoka's own certainty wavered for a moment. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Natsume wasn't the mole, even though he'd had every reason and opportunity to be.

The man in question flashed a brittle smile. "And there you have it, Kurosaki. Just a little crisis of faith. I'm sure everyone here gets them from time to time. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

 _Just a crisis of faith, huh?_ Or maybe he was just that good. Maybe he _was_ just telling Hisoka what he thought he wanted to hear. Maybe Natsume had been reassigned to Billing because he was impervious to bribery or appeals to his conscience. Maybe he lacked a conscience entirely. Hisoka had never actually encountered the like; he wasn't sure if he knew what it would be like to touch another soul that felt nothing for its fellow human beings, if he would even recognize such a soul.

But that couldn't be the case, could it? Natsume had appeared genuinely disturbed by the recent string of cases, too affected for it all to have been an act. So surely there were other reasons for his apparent confidence. Natsume displayed a gift for charms and spells. Could he have found one that could turn his mind into a psychic Faraday cage?

He was taking this far too well. Confidence. That was precisely what it was—what his posture was telling Hisoka, his psyche. _For all that flattery, he doesn't believe I can get in. He must think he can trick me into believing his honesty, distracting me like a magician from what's_ really _going on._ But Hisoka just took that as a challenge.

"No," he said. "No, that isn't what I wanted to hear. I think there's something else you're hiding from me."

A muscle twitched in Natsume's jaw. And if Hisoka had been closer, and in a place that wasn't loud with roiling liquid fire, he was sure he might have felt Natsume's pulse jump, too. _So, there_ is _something._

"So what if there is. Everyone's entitled to have a secret or two of their own. But you're the empath," Natsume sneered. "Why don't you tell me what it is I'm supposedly hiding."

 _Damn it, he knows my power doesn't work that way._ Hisoka had told him as such on their first case.

What Natsume didn't know was that what empathy Hisoka did have could work both ways. He poured on the guilt, let it fill the room like thick waves. "Really, Natsume, it would be better for you if it came from your own lips."

What Hisoka hadn't been expecting was the sensation of betrayal that echoed back at him. "Maybe you ought to drag it from me, then, Kurosaki, if it's so goddamn important to you. Really, I don't know what I've done to deserve this kind of treatment—"

"You fed information on Summons back to Peacekeeping while we were looking for Tsuzuki."

Natsume's eyes went wide in shock. _There! I've got him._

Only it wasn't so much the shock of a man who's been caught out—though even that could have been just another example of Natsume's acting skills. He recovered quickly enough. "I'm not sure where to even start with that," he said with a little laugh. "I told Tatsumi he might have spies in his department, back when maybe we could have actually done something to prevent it from getting out of hand, and all I got was a cold shoulder. No one believed me. Now you're telling me that not only have you known there was a mole the whole time, you think _I_ was it?"

"You deny it?"

"Yes! Of course I deny it, because it isn't true!"

"And what reason do I have to believe you? How can I know you're not lying to me right now?"

"You're the empath. How can you _not_ tell?"

"Maybe because you've convinced yourself you were doing the right thing for so long, you actually believe that what you're saying is the truth—"

"Because it _is_ the truth! Why would you even think I'd betray Summons? You know how I feel about Peacekeeping—"

"I know what you _tell_ me you feel."

Natsume sighed. He shook his head and threw up his hands, as though pleading for some higher power to knock it into Hisoka's brain for him. Whether or not Hisoka's projection was having an influence on him, he couldn't let up the pressure. Not now that it seemed like Natsume was on the brink of capitulating.

"Look," he said as he massaged a temple, not meeting Hisoka's eyes. "I hate Peacekeeping. Okay? They're the whole reason I'm stuck in Billing day in and out instead of doing something meaningful with my afterlife. You got a sense of that better than anyone else has a right to. So you tell me why I would work with them to undermine Summons."

"Maybe they promised you something." But Natsume shook his head at that. "Everyone has a weak point that can be exploited, Natsume—"

"What could they possibly promise me that would make me forgive them enough to betray Summons for them?"

"If you wanted to be a Summons agent again so bad, I'm sure it's well within Todoroki's power to have you reinstated, and get whatever you did to get transferred expunged." Hisoka couldn't quite tell from Natsume's laugh if the other found that ridiculous, or he was getting closer to the mark. "What am I supposed to think, Natsume? You had access to our inner circle—information that only the most trusted Summons agents knew, yet somehow Todoroki knew what we were going to do before we did it."

"Have you subjected Terazuma to this little interrogation yet? No one outside of Peacekeeping ever hated Tsuzuki so much. I'm surprised he isn't you number-one suspect."

This is what I expected, Hisoka thought. It was a sign of desperation, trying to throw the scent off of himself and on to someone else. And Hisoka knew he had a point, he should have suspected Terazuma; yet he knew with a certainty that he could not explain that Terazuma's loyalty, perhaps more than anyone else in the department, was beyond question.

"This isn't about Terazuma," he said. "It's about you. You had the access, Natsume, and for all I know, you had the motivation, too. You were awfully quick to call Peacekeeping in on our last case, for someone who claims to hate them so much."

"Because the sooner we show them we're willing to cooperate, the sooner we get them off our back!"

Even as Natsume said that, he knew how it sounded. Hisoka detected fear—fear that admission would be seen as a sign of his guilt, or . . .

No, that it might lead to what he was really hiding. Hisoka narrowed his eyes, as though he only needed a better view to bring what was coiled up within his partner into focus.

That was when he heard the growl behind him. A droning sound he knew without turning belonged to a cat. K had arrived.

Or perhaps she had been there with them all along, hiding in some dark corner until the time was right to show herself. Hisoka couldn't say either way; K was a psychic black hole to him. And though he had little to fear from a small cat, he didn't like the fact that he was trapped between her and the master she had come to protect, with the furnace that was the Lake of Fire uncomfortably close off his side. Even a little cat could deal a fatal blow, if she could throw him off his guard and off his balance.

Or did so long enough for Natsume to attack. Right. He was the one Hisoka needed to watch, the one he needed to be wary of. He had seen Natsume's speed in the field, his resourcefulness. Sure, he seemed calm now, with his hands in his trouser pockets, but there was no telling if he had fuda in there, or something even more dangerous. More of those cherry bombs, perhaps, only this time releasing venom from Enma's spider instead of salt and holy water.

But Hisoka had come too far to let the matter drop now, when he was so close to an answer. He sidestepped a little bit away from the lake, a move which did not go unnoticed, and may have been taken as a threat. He felt Natsume tense, and heard K's mrowl pitch upward in warning.

"It's alright, K," Natsume said to her. "Kurosaki and I are just having a little chat." But the cat didn't seem to believe that was all it was.

"Just tell me what I want to know and we can be done here," said Hisoka, eager to have this over with himself. "You know, if you don't want to say the words out loud, we can always shake on it. Let your conscience do the speaking for you."

But Natsume looked in dread at his extended hand. "I think I'll pass. No offense, but I do not consent to you rooting around in my brain. In any case, my word ought to be enough for you, if this partnership of ours even means anything. You wouldn't put Tsuzuki through this rigmarole—"

"I'm sorry, Natsume, but I know better than anyone that words are cheap. Even Tsuzuki's."

"Damn it, I'm not lying on this! I'm not the spy—"

"Yet why do I get this guilty feeling you're hiding something from me?" Natsume's eyes widened behind his glasses, though he tried not to look affected. Hisoka allowed himself a smirk. "I don't need to touch you to know that much."

Behind him, K produced a more nuanced mrowl that Natsume appeared to be listening to. Whether the cat had given him away, or he had finally put the pieces together on his own, the game was up. "Are you manipulating me right now?"

Hisoka couldn't deny it. So he asked, "How do you feel?"

"Sick. Like my breakfast wants to come up. Only not my breakfast." Natsume almost laughed at the revelation. "A secret. That's it. Whatever you're doing, it's like you've caught some secret inside me on a line and you're trying to pull it up."

"Then it's working."

It was anger Hisoka felt coming back toward him, however, a sense that he had violated something he shouldn't have, something precious. "Oh, this is low, Kurosaki, even by Summons' standards. You have no right to get into my head, make me feel things—"

"But you want to confess. Don't you?" It wasn't really a question. The look on Natsume's face said enough. "Just say it, and I'll stop."

K hissed behind him. There was no way for Hisoka to know if the next second she would attack him to defend her master. But he was so close. He couldn't give up now. "To ease your conscience, Natsume. I know how it's eating you up inside, keeping it in. I know because I feel it too. That's how this projection thing works. So just tell me what I want to know, and both of us can get on with our day, and go back to work like none of this happened."

"Does this mean you believe me when I say I'm not the spy?"

If that was what it took . . . "Let's say I do. But if we're to be partners going forward, there shouldn't be any secrets between us that might interfere with us doing our duty."

That was awfully bold, coming from him. _Everyone has secrets they're entitled to keep, Hisoka, even you._ And Hisoka knew he deserved that thought, when an echo of it was aimed his way. Whatever agreement passed wordlessly between them, K's growling stopped, and she dashed by Hisoka to leap up on to her perch on Natsume's shoulder.

He rubbed her head before saying to Hisoka, as if both he and the cat had decided: "Why not. I now know about this . . . projection thing that you can do. I suppose it's only fair you have something you can hold over me. I, uh, don't suppose it's too late to ask for your discretion?"

"Tell me first. Then I'll decide whether it stays between us."

Natsume shrugged. Really, it was the best he could hope for given his present circumstances. "Just to warn you, it's kind of a long story. I hope there isn't somewhere you need to be for the next hour or so."

* * *

They agreed they needed to find some other place to talk. The heat of the lake was oppressive, and neither one liked yelling over the roar of the roiling while discussing such a sensitive topic.

A short while later found the three of them wandering the labyrinth of service tunnels and abandoned storage spaces that ran deep under the Judgment Bureau offices and all the way to the Castle of Candles. Many areas felt as though they hadn't seen a soul in years, but they were still in the territory of kappa and other demons endemic to Meifu; so to keep from being overheard, they kept to the drier passages, and traveled inside the bubble of a charm Natsume produced that would mask their conversation.

"So long as we're being honest with each other," Natsume said only when he was certain it was safe to do so, "you should know that I'm planning to break into Mother."

The supercomputer that Watari had been instrumental in creating before he came to Summons? Hisoka had been under the impression that it was impenetrable, and incorruptible. That had been the whole point of the program.

And for that reason, reason enough to keep such a plan secret. Hisoka could see now why Natsume had been so afraid of revealing it. "Why would you want to do that?"

Natsume was fighting again. Hesitating.

"Come on," Hisoka coaxed, really not wanting to put the pressure to confess back on. "You brought me all the way down here—"

"Because Muraki can't die."

Hisoka started. Whatever answer he had been expecting, that wasn't it. What the hell did he mean by that? "He's immortal?" That would explain a lot, not to mention confirm one of Hisoka's worst fears. And if Natsume hoped to use Mother to change that, maybe it was worth helping him out.

But Natsume sighed, said: "No. As far as I know, he _can_ die. That's just the point. He can't be allowed to. _I_ can't allow him to."

"But why the hell not?" Maybe they weren't on the same side after all, if Natsume was prepared to keep that man alive. "After everything he's done—Natsume, the man _deserves_ to die—"

"God, Kurosaki—don't you understand? If Muraki dies, he'll come _here_! Just like every other soul, he'll be sent to Judgment to stand trial for his life. And when Enma sees what he's capable of, he won't dare make the same mistake he did with the grandfather and destroy his soul. He won't let such a huge opportunity go to waste."

Even before he said it, it began to dawn on Hisoka. He felt a chill as the blood drained from his face.

"If you hate Muraki this much while he's alive," said Natsume, "how do you think you're going to like working with him for the rest of your afterlife?"

Hisoka couldn't believe that Enma would actually entertain the idea of making Muraki, the man responsible for bedeviling him and his goals for years, an actual shinigami. And he told Natsume so.

"I know. It isn't something I want to believe either. But I have reason to suspect that that's exactly what Enma has been planning for decades. He's been amassing powerful shinigami—building himself an unbeatable army."

"But for what?" was what Hisoka wanted to know. "Does he expect Enma-cho is going to be attacked?"

"Do kings need a reason to amass more power?" Natsume riposted, and Hisoka could not deny there was some truth to that, even if he couldn't believe there wasn't more to it. _A powerful man, or god, always has to be on the lookout for rivals. There's always_ someone _who wants that power for themselves._

"That's supposing he could even control Tsuzuki, though, let alone Muraki." And of Enma's ability to do that, Hisoka had serious doubts, if past experience was any indication. "You have proof?"

Natsume faltered in his pace for a moment, and Hisoka stopped before he could get too far ahead, turning back. He could feel Natsume's hesitation more than he could see it in the dark. The misgiving in the way he reached up to scratch K, who was riding along on his shoulder, as though to borrow some of her strength or certainty. This time, it was not that he feared Hisoka knowing what was on his mind. His was the hesitation of knowing that saying a thing only made it more real.

"No," Natsume eventually said. "I don't have any proof. That is, nothing that isn't highly circumstantial."

"But you do have _circumstantial_ evidence."

"Only all the people Enma's been recruiting so far. In case you haven't noticed, quite a few of them have a connection to one Muraki or both."

"Such as myself," Hisoka thought aloud. "And Konoe mentioned he and Todoroki both worked for Muraki Yukitaka during the war. And Tsuzuki, of course. He stayed with Yukitaka for eight years before he died." That was the start of this whole Muraki mess, the way Hisoka had heard it; though he had never been able to blame Tsuzuki for it. How could he have possibly known what Yukitaka would go on to do after his death? From the sound of things, Tsuzuki hadn't exactly been himself during that time either.

Other than that, however, Hisoka couldn't think of another name that was connected. "You think there may be others in the Judgment Bureau? In Peacekeeping? In Summons?" He couldn't imagine Wakaba or Terazuma, or Tatsumi for that matter, having some tie to the Murakis—but how much did he really know about who they were when they were alive?

"I'm still working on that angle," Natsume admitted with a grudging grumble. "I do know that Sister Agrippina was summoned by Tsuzuki himself—"

"What?"

Natsume blinked at his shock. "You didn't know? Well, yeah. From what I heard, it wasn't pretty. She fought him pretty hard, and didn't make any effort to hide the fact that she held a grudge against him for taking her life against her will. If you ask me, she'd been waiting for him to mess up and give her a reason to take him down a peg the whole time she was here. And I strongly suspect Todoroki recruited her for precisely that reason. I just wish I had the documentation to prove it. A lot of Todoroki's appointments and orders over the years seem to have been strictly word-of-mouth, no doubt so they can never be verified in court."

If that were true, Hisoka didn't feel so bad admitting he was glad he had inadvertently destroyed Agrippina. That was one less person who had it in for Tsuzuki—one less out of a multitude to worry about. "That doesn't sound very professional, hiring Peacekeepers who have such a deep hatred for the people they'd be watching."

"But if that's been Todoroki's mission from the beginning—if those are the orders he'd been given by Enma himself. . . ."

That was a disturbing enough thought in itself. Only Hisoka didn't know which was worse: that Enma had been thinking of Tsuzuki all this time as an attack dog, to be sicced on the enemies of his choosing, or that he had deliberately chosen the most sadistic agents to watch over him.

And that left Hisoka wondering just what kind of plans Enma had for _him_ that he didn't know about. What parts of that plan had he already unwillingly, and unwittingly, fulfilled? "So, Agrippina can be connected back to Tsuzuki. But to Muraki?"

"I don't think so. But it's all part of the same larger plan, I think, this confluence of characters connected by either their karma or their deaths, or both. I do know that Enma would risk keeping at least one person around just for the connection, even though it's going to cost him more in the end than simply letting them move on."

That sounded like an awfully specific accusation to make—a threat, more like—requiring intimate knowledge. "Why, what makes you think that?"

"Because I believe that connection is the only reason I'm still here."

* * *

Hisoka wasn't sure he was hearing him right. "What are you saying? That you knew Tsuzuki in life, too?" No, Natsume's age wasn't right to have been around in the 1920s or earlier. He could have been one of Tsuzuki's cases, but somehow Hisoka didn't think that was it either. "You knew Muraki."

The steadiness of Natsume's stare, even through the dark, told Hisoka the latter was correct. "In a manner of speaking. You and I have more in common than you think, Kurosaki. We both have Muraki Kazutaka to thank for our deaths."

"If you can call it thanks. I thought you said you died in an accident." Or maybe it was Tatsumi who had said it, when Natsume was first assigned his partner.

Natsume grinned a lopsided grin. "Come on, Kurosaki. Everyone gets told you died after a long illness, but who actually believes it?"

Just the mention of his death was enough to bring on memories—the chill of Muraki's touch and the cherry blossoms in the light of the lunar eclipse that seemed to always resurface automatically. Forcing them back down again, Hisoka crossed his arms over his chest. "What did he do to you?"

"Nothing like what he did to you. Well, not exactly." K leapt down, and Natsume leaned back against the wall of the tunnel. And with that, he launched into his story.

"It was Nineteen-eighty-four, and I was studying engineering at the University of Tokyo, minoring in literature. I had plans to go into space, if you can believe it—well, build stuff that could be shot into space, anyway, although if I were honest I was just another fool trying to stave off the inevitable slide into salaryman-dom as long as possible. Muraki was at the medical school there, in his third year, but I didn't know it at the time—or have any reason to know him at all, for that matter. Our lives never had a reason to intersect.

"During that time, some Lit. friends of mine invited me to join an occult club on campus—"

"You can't be serious. Didn't you guys know how dangerous that is?"

"Well, we didn't really believe in that stuff," Natsume said, "so, no. We all just thought it was an amusing way to pass the time, you know, like those bored aristocrats in the original Hellfire Club. Drinking absinthe and reciting poetry, listening to Goth music back when it was actually worth listening to, and convincing the occasional co-ed to stand in as our virgin sacrifice for one night. We thought we were some kind of hot-shots, and liked to bring in our more superstitious friends and rig the place to give the appearance of ghost lights or floating candles, have some guy make demon noises in the room next door. Give them a good scare.

"Then one night, one of our members invites this nineteen-year-old kid who's supposed to be some prodigy in the medical program—"

"Muraki."

Natsume blinked, as if he could see the young doctor's face before him, before he had ever become "the doctor." "Yeah. I still remember how the air changed the moment he stepped into our club. He looked so different from anyone else on campus, so pale and unearthly and delicate, like—"

"Don't say an angel."

"Well, if the shoe fits! It might have been the first time some of us ever found another guy attractive. But, you know him, he has this _way_ about him that just sucks you in, no matter who you are. He was so polite, so eager to get started, just all smiles and the most gentlemanly manners. A sort of Dorian Gray, you know? The kind of guy you can't fault for anything."

Hisoka could picture this Muraki he never knew, young and slight and almost androgynously beautiful, like an image of a saint; though whether the image was coming from Natsume or his own imagination, he couldn't be sure. Either way, it filled him with revulsion, knowing the beauty and politeness was all a facade. A lie. Like a beautiful tapestry hiding the trap door to a pit of bottomless cruelty.

"In hindsight, maybe we should have guessed he might be hiding some kind of darkness behind his act, but unfortunately hindsight doesn't work that way. Anyway, he had expressed some interest in the occult, so we thought we would humor him and do a little demonic summoning, see just how easily he scared."

Hisoka felt a chill run down his spine, even if these events had happened decades ago. He knew where the story was going, and it was as fresh to him as it was in Natsume's memory.

"Needless to say, out of all the times we'd performed the same rituals, not expecting a single thing to happen, that was the one time they worked."

Natsume tried his best to describe the scene, the emotions he and his fellow club members experienced, but he didn't need to say it aloud. Hisoka could sense the fear as though it were his own, the crisis of a nonbeliever suddenly shown the worst of everything he didn't believe in was true. The descending darkness in the room, the queer cast of the candlelight, the glowing lines in the center of the floor responding to the incantation. The knowing it was too late to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle.

"Then this woman appears in the center of the circle—one moment there's nothing and then, _snap_ , there she is. It was almost laughable. She was dressed like Kaji Meiko in the revenge scene in _Female Convict 701: Scorpion_ : long black trench, wide-brimmed hat. But tall. I mean, taller than she looked—like you could just _feel_ the enormity of her. She looked human enough, but you could just tell she wasn't. I remember having his weird thought that maybe it wasn't Medusa's ugliness that turned anyone who looked at her to stone; because there was something about this woman that was so beautiful, it literally hurt. She looked at you, and you felt petrified.

"She had a live snake going up each arm, too, and two lions at her side. It was pretty bad-ass—or would have been if it wasn't absolutely, piss-your-pants terrifying. You could tell they weren't normal snakes and lions either. There was something in their eyes, like this . . . hunger that you just don't see at the zoo. Like you just knew, watching them watch you, that you were dinner.

"We didn't even get a word in before she sicced her animals on us." Natsume took a shuddering breath as he removed his glasses, wiping the lenses on his jacket. As if that could get the picture out of his head, the horror, or the memory of pain that Hisoka knew never actually went away. You only numbed yourself to it. "It was a bloodbath. They tore us apart, each and every one of us. All except Muraki. There was something about him. . . . I don't know. But before I died, I remember seeing him there on his knees by the circle, arms out, staring up at this woman and saying . . . something. I don't know what. To be honest, I wasn't concentrating on much of anything at the time except the fact that I was going to die. But his lips were moving and I have no doubt he was making some pact with her right then and there."

The donor of Hijiri's cornea had made a pact, too, and its imprint was left indelibly in his eye, like a seal stamped into wax. Muraki had an eye like that. It shone like a searchlight in the darkness of Hisoka's nightmares. So it wasn't so hard for him to believe that Natsume's theory had a good deal of truth to it.

"Do you think his being there was what summoned the demon?"

By the furrow in Natsume's brow, he must have been wondering the same himself the last twenty years. "All I know for sure is that nothing we ever did worked even remotely like it did that night, and he was the only thing we did differently. It was like we were only there to be his sacrifice," he said with a grimace, sickened by the thought. "The whole club of us."

"Who were you trying to summon?"

That earned Hisoka a little laugh. "Who else? Only the high king of Hell, Astaroth."

Hisoka paled. It must have shown clearly enough in the dark, too, because Natsume sobered and asked what the matter was. "Astaroth has been after Tsuzuki for years," Hisoka told him. "After Tsuzuki defeated Sargatanas, he was supposed to inherit his position as Brigade Commander. Astaroth insisted he take the place, and forbade other demons to challenge Tsuzuki for it. Focalor broke that commandment, and set us up on a summons—"

"I remember that case!" said Natsume. "The fire at St. Michel Prep. I think Kira mentioned something about it."

" _Kira," huh?_ There was something amusing in that that made Hisoka happy for his partner.

"Yeah, well, apparently Focalor wasn't as destroyed as we thought he was. He was the other devil in Minase's apartment that night." And now that night started to make a kind of sense that had been out of Hisoka's reach at the time. "I don't think he's given up on Tsuzuki. Only now I wonder if he and Astaroth have repaired whatever rift was between them. They must be working together. How else would Focalor have survived the return to Hell after disobeying his master's wishes?"

Natsume nodded slowly. "And Astaroth is working— _has been_ working with Muraki for the last two decades. Man, if only I knew what Muraki promised her to get on her good side. . . ."

"Whatever it was, you can bet a person with Muraki's expertise and utter lack of compassion can actually deliver on it. I've seen him pull beasts out of thin air that could only have come from Hell. I always thought he was working alone, but now I have to wonder if he had some help from that other side."

"Which is just another reason he can't become a shinigami." By which Hisoka knew Natsume meant "must not." "If he's a menace in the living world now, what do you think he'll be with all this place's resources at his back, not to mention an immortal body? Can you imagine what havoc he could wreak by bringing those demonic energies here?"

"Worse than Tsuzuki's possession by Sargatanas?" It was hard to imagine worse, if only because Summons had come so close to losing that battle.

"Let's just say that _if_ such a thing ever happened again, Enma will be damned happy to have you and Konoe, and people as powerful as Kannuki and Tatsumi on his side. Whether you like it or not, you're part of a collection. A super group, if you will, with some highly desirable skill sets."

Yeah, Hisoka agreed. He was beginning to feel that more and more. And in the process, feel less and less like he was in possession of his own autonomy. "And you?" he guessed.

Natsume snorted. "Alas, _I_ am virtually useless—"

"What do you mean? You got Watari's contraption up and running," Hisoka supplied, remembering the unlikely toaster-like device Natsume had used to capture a shoggoth on one of their missions. And then literally fried the living daylights out of it. "Even if there were a few bugs still to work out. And you know more about demons and Hell than anyone else I know in this place—not to mention," he added, looking around them, "how well you know the ins and outs of this maze."

"I might have mentioned before," Natsume dismissed the compliment with a shrug, "I have a _lot_ of free time on my hands down in the basement. Ample time to memorize all the secret tunnels under Enma-cho. My tinkering hasn't amounted to much, and my vast stores of arcane knowledge only seem to help me on office trivia nights. But at least I can't cause much trouble in the Billing Department. Enma probably thinks I still have information on Muraki or Hell that could be of use to him locked up inside my noggin, but if I do, it must be buried so deep that even _I_ don't know what it is."

"You don't think he keeps you around for your hacking skills?"

Hisoka wasn't expecting that to get the big laugh it did.

"What's funny about that? Tatsumi's always talking about you having this uncanny ability to get any secure document he wants."

"Ah, that," Natsume managed through his laughter, "wasn't me. Truth is, I may know my way around an OS, and I'll even admit I'm kind of a spreadsheet freak. But I couldn't _hack_ my way out of paper bag. Or _into_ a paper bag, for that matter. And if I could, I sure as hell wouldn't tell Enma about it."

"But, the classified files—all that talk about updating security—and now you tell me you want to break into Mother? If you don't know how to do this stuff yourself, why would you even try? That isn't exactly amateur level. You know what can happen if you're caught tampering with Mother."

"But I never said I was doing it alone."

"Then, who's helping you?" Hisoka said as he bent to pet K, who was arching against his leg.

Natsume chuckled. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

K chirruped, and thrust her face into Hisoka's palm. He looked up at Natsume. "You don't really want me to force it out of you again."

But Natsume just grinned as he shook his head. "I'm not hiding anything, Kurosaki. You've already met my partner in crime. She's been right here with us the whole time— _literally_ under our noses."

Hisoka was getting fed up with the run-around and was just about to tell Natsume to cut the crap. And then it clicked. He just hadn't wanted to accept the truth because it seemed too ridiculous.

He looked down at K—who had sat down on her haunches and was staring Hisoka in the eye, just waiting for him to get with the program. Despite his trouble reading cats, it was the first time he had allowed himself to see what had been in front of him all along. K may not have been human, but there was an understanding in her eyes that was no less intelligent, and no less appreciative of irony. He would even swear that she was smiling at him.

"She's your partner?" Hisoka deadpanned.

Natsume beamed just like his cat. "Yep! Been with me every day for the last fifteen years. Really, I'm surprised you didn't figure that out right away."

"Yeah, well, a heads-up would have been helpful."

Natsume blinked. "Sorry. I thought you knew from our first case together, figured that's why you never said anything about her accompanying us."

"My empathy doesn't work on cats," Hisoka grudgingly admitted, hating to feel like the butt of any joke. So this was the partner Endo had mentioned. He'd said it was weird. Hisoka hadn't really understood what he meant by that until now. "Are you really trying to tell me K is an honest-to-god shinigami?"

K shot him a look as if to say, _Finally_ he gets it!

"Back in the mid-nineteenth century it was decided that an animal could attain enlightenment," Natsume explained, "so, according to the transitive properties of the On Earth As It Is In Heaven rule, it was decided they could become shinigami, too. It doesn't happen all that often, though. It takes a rare breed. K just happens to be one of them. We had a snow monkey in the mail room at one point, too, but he might have moved on since I last saw him. . . ."

Hisoka had to shake his head. He knew Natsume wasn't trying to pull one over on him, but it was still asking him to believe a lot. "So, she lived and died, just like a human shinigami?"

"Celebrated her ninety-fourth death-day, what, a year ago, K?"

The cat craned her head to look back at him and meowed.

"Ninety-sixth. Sorry, I keep forgetting what an old lady you are. She proved herself to be worthy of the position and the responsibility attached at her judgment, just like any of us. Even worked Summons and Peacekeeping for a time, making her one of the few shinigami left who's been in continuous service longer than Tsuzuki. I never got to see her at work in the field, but you've seen her bedside manner. I kind of envy the people who passed in her hands, er, paws. At least it would have been a peaceful death, compared to how I went."

"And she's your hacker?" said a still incredulous Hisoka.

"Look. Imagine you had been around for the combined total of about six full human lifespans—let's say of a conservative estimate of seventy years each—all the while with the young, springy neurons you had when you died. That's, what, four hundred twenty years? A long time for any human to be around. Think of the vast wealth of information you'd be able to retain, the languages you could master. Well, K's been around for roughly the feline equivalent. Ninety years is plenty of time to master a few skills."

"But she's a _cat_!" Hisoka didn't know why that point needed belaboring. It should have been obvious. "And we're not talking about learning to play chess. How could a cat possibly understand computer code? Never mind that—why would it want to?"

"Boredom? For the challenge? The pleasure of getting to be part of the coming-of-age story of an entire science, from its infancy on up? Maybe a combination of all those things. I don't know. She doesn't tell me. Doesn't change the fact that she does what she does. And very well, at that.

"I don't know why this is so weird for you," Natsume added under his breath. "You don't seem to have this problem with Zero-zero-three."

If he was trying to say Watari's little owl was a shinigami too, that was a little more than Hisoka could handle at one time. Though K being one would explain a few things, like how she seemed to be able to walk through walls. Teleportation might have been an unusual ability for a cat, but not for a shinigami.

In any case, for his own sanity he decided to steer the conversation back to more pressing concerns.

* * *

"So, you and K are planning to hack into Mother," Hisoka said as they picked their way through a chamber resembling an old subway station, packed haphazardly with old furniture and what looked like mid-century radio equipment. "Not something I would recommend—"

"Yeah, I know, I could be severely reprimanded—maybe even have my very existence terminated," Natsume huffed between breaths, K's bell jingling somewhere in the rubble nearby him. "Recommendation to abort duly noted."

"But what I still don't understand is why. What do you hope to accomplish when you've broken through? That is, _if_ you manage to break through? Do you even know what you'll find when you get there?"

"I have some notion. I'm not going into this completely blind, I've done my research. And I have reason to believe the heart of Mother contains the source code, so to speak, of this world, and all the souls that pass through it. Once we've reached it, theoretically, we should have the power to reverse Muraki Kazutaka's death, should it ever occur."

"And the power to bring anyone you choose back to life. Or alter the destinations of their souls." If that's what Mother existed to protect, Enma had good reason to have that power locked away where no one, not even he, could reach it.

"No." On that, Natsume was adamant. "His is the only fate I plan to interfere in."

Hisoka had to stop. Not just to take a breather—and get some of this dust out of his system—but to really think about the implications. "I don't like it." The words just came out without any thought, so strong was the truth of what he felt that he couldn't contain it and didn't try. "You have to understand why I wouldn't like it."

Natsume hurried back to him. The charm of silence only worked within a small area, and he could not risk a topic this sensitive being overheard by some unseen ear.

"I have a rough idea how you died, yeah." God, Hisoka thought, did everyone in Enma-cho know that about him? "So I get why you'd want to kill Muraki yourself. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to make that bastard suffer for what he did to me, too. But I have to think about the bigger picture."

"The bigger picture?" Now Hisoka really wasn't sure if they were on the same side or not. "The longer Muraki is alive and out there in the living world, the more innocent people die on account of his actions. Yes, I want to kill him for what he did to me, and for what he did to Tsuzuki. But he _deserves_ to die, and to suffer, for the crimes he's done to the innocent."

 _And why don't I consider myself among the innocent?_ It was a question that might have been circling around Hisoka's consciousness for a while, but only when he examined his choice of words did it leap out at him. Was it just that he had been a shinigami for what felt like so long that he forgot that he had been human once, too, and innocent of this whole mess he was in now, when Muraki first came to him? This hatred he felt now, this burning need for revenge, had not been his until after his death; yet he spoke of himself as though the Hisoka he was now was somehow the same as the one who had been raped and cursed in that cherry grove, and murdered.

Or was it something more than that? Even before Muraki had come into his life, he had felt that something in his very nature was already cursed, already tainted. His own parents had shut him away, called him a monster, just for being able to read their feelings, their prejudices, their shame. And if that was just Hisoka being what he had been born to be, could he say he was ever innocent?

He looked up at his partner. "Natsume, I can't let you get in the way of my revenge. I have to kill him. Waking up each day knowing that is what I'm going to do is what's kept me going ever since I came here. And a part of me has to believe it's what I was made a shinigami for."

"I understand," Natsume said gravely. What he didn't voice, but what Hisoka knew he was thinking, was that he could not allow Hisoka to stop him from pursuing his goal either. "Then, should I expect you to report my plans to Konoe?"

That was the question, wasn't it? If Hisoka did so, Natsume would almost certainly have to go before Judgment, perhaps even Enma himself, and confess to what amounted to a charge of treason. That was even without considering that Todoroki might catch wind of it from their as-yet undiscovered mole, and involve Peacekeeping in the matter. Nonomiya was at least sympathetic to Summons and to Tsuzuki. Hisoka couldn't imagine trying to go about their business under the constant suspicious gaze and abusive tongue of someone like Endo; but that was a very real possibility if Enma was given some reason to agree with Todoroki, that a Summons without oversight was too dangerous to allow.

Hisoka felt like he was being tested, the longer he weighed the matter over in his mind. It seemed that no matter what he decided, there was no clear correct decision. If he kept Natsume's plan a secret, it would mean the person most interested in foiling Hisoka's own plan was the one working beside him. Yet if he revealed it, he could send Natsume to Hell or oblivion, or—knowing Enma—worse. And did he want the fate of a man's eternal soul on his hands? An eternal soul that wasn't Muraki's, that was.

"No," Hisoka decided. For now. "I won't report you. Even though I can't help you, either. You took a risk confiding in me," he said before Natsume's thank-yous could become too profuse.

"It's not like you gave me much of a choice."

No, Hisoka supposed he hadn't. "I might need a favor from you in the future," he said. "There might be a time when I need to be able to count on your discretion." After all, Tsuzuki was still out there, even if Muraki did have him for now, and getting him back was not a fight Hisoka was about to give up.

Natsume shot him a smile and a wink for that. "Whatever you need, just ask. I owe you one."

But for now, they had reached the end of their shared road. The tunnels had started to dampen, the drip of perspiration off the ceiling a perpetual background soundtrack to their conversation, and Natsume feared they would soon be approaching kappa country. Silence charms would do no good then, with a people who would spot them easily in the dark and know a couple of shinigami's presence in their territory was no good. Besides which, they'd been gone long enough from Summons; if they stayed out any longer it might arouse the wrong kind of suspicion.

With a "See you back at the office" they agreed to split ways, Natsume heading back the way he had come, Hisoka moving on ahead through a shortcut his partner had assured him would take him topside in a few minutes. For added assurances, Natsume sent K along to point Hisoka's way.

And though Hisoka was only the slightest bit closer to learning who the mole in Summons was, Natsume had given him a lot to digest, as he followed the cat's jingling bell and dancing tail through the dark passageways. Certainly not what Hisoka had been expecting when he decided to confront his partner.

This part was always hard, learning to trust someone after learning the truth about them—a truth that had been deliberately kept from him. And at the moment, Hisoka wasn't sure he _could_ trust Natsume again. At least, not in the same way. He could still go out on a case with him and have every confidence in their ability to get it done. But could he ever really trust someone who was prepared to sacrifice others, even his own afterlife, to keep Muraki alive? Was it really Enma-cho's best interest Natsume had at heart?

Or was it Enma he feared—what Enma might do, if he had Muraki and Tsuzuki, and all his most valuable players, all in the same place? All that power—amassing it might not be enough. It might be too tempting _not_ to use.

Presently K brought Hisoka to a root cellar, which opened up to a wooden shed full of gardening supplies and sports equipment. Hisoka's toe sent a croquet ball rolling across the floor, its possibly century-old paint wearing away under a layer of old caked-on dirt. Hisoka peeked outside to see if it was clear to come out. Thankfully the shed was situated behind a row of tall hydrangeas to hide it from passers-by, so he didn't think anyone would notice him coming out of it.

He started to thank K, who had been by his side a moment ago; but when he looked down, she had already disappeared.


	11. No returns

**Author note:** _This chapter contains possible triggers for nonconsensual bondage, cutting, and suggestions of rape. Nothing too canon-noncompliant. In light of that, however, I think I'll up the rating a wee bit. . . ._

* * *

The sensation of being strangled woke Tsuzuki with a start.

Instinct kicked in. He bolted upright—but something dug into his throat before he could lift his head very far and yanked him back to the mattress. He tried to tear whatever held him away, but his wrists were bound at the edges of the bed by thick straps.

He recognized this getup as the kind used to hold down the insane for electroshock therapy. Yukitaka had strapped him to a similar cot after his first attempt at suicide. _We must protect him from himself,_ he had told the frightened nurses who came to visit. But Tsuzuki had only to be patient and catatonic and wait to be released to try again.

Then Tsuzuki's hands had been bound by his side, rather than at the level of his eyes, as Muraki had done. He tried to move his legs, but though he could move them sideways if he struggled, a pair of straps over his thighs ensured he couldn't raise them more than a centimeter off the bed, and ankle cuffs kept them a certain width apart. The cuff around his throat was loose now, too, no longer digging into his skin when he relaxed, but it was warning enough. If he fought his restraints, he was liable to only hurt himself. A true hospital setting would never allow such a rigging, as it was just as likely to injure the patient as keep him safe.

Then again, Tsuzuki knew better than to expect Muraki to abide by codes and regulations.

"I see you're awake."

Tsuzuki might have growled, if his windpipe weren't recovering. If he turned his head the other way, he could see Muraki standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb.

And he could see that this wasn't the bedroom he'd gone to sleep in. This one looked even more clinical, perhaps an operating theater, à la 1925. "You went through a lot of trouble to move me," Tsuzuki said through vocal chords that felt bruised. "More tranqs, I presume?"

Muraki smirked. "I have more effective tools at my disposal." But that really wasn't a satisfactory answer.

He crossed the room far too swiftly for Tsuzuki's liking, even if he did take his time. And when he reached the bedside, he made a show of inspecting the straps, confident enough in his own safety to lean over Tsuzuki. Now, with such intimate proximity, Tsuzuki saw the malice behind the smile. He wanted to turn away from it, but he resisted the urge.

"You destroyed my dolls."

"Every last one," Tsuzuki said with relish.

"Many of them were my late mother's. They were irreplaceable."

"Well, then. You should have thought twice about leaving me alone with them before you used them to spy on me."

Tsuzuki expected a blow. He welcomed it. Anything to know he had managed to wound Muraki in some significant way. He did not look away from those silver eyes, even the scarred one, searching for the anger and hatred that he had earned there. And he was not disappointed.

But only for a moment. Then Muraki forced an airy laugh and pushed himself away from the bed. "You're right, of course. It shows a lack of foresight on my part. I must admit, it upset me to see what you had done, and I was disappointed in you. But I suppose in some sense I should thank you as well."

"Thank me?" Vengeance Tsuzuki expected, but thanks?

"For freeing me from the last physical reminders I had of her. I may have allowed my sentimentality over them to hold me back."

He turned to a cart beside the bed. The gentle clink of metal instruments against a steel tray. Sharp metal instruments. Tsuzuki felt his heart leap within him in fearful anticipation, like a beaten child at the rattle of a belt buckle.

"Perhaps there is some truth to the poets' exhortation," Muraki mused, "to kill that which is precious to you. I was never much of a Buddhist, but I can agree that attachments do have a tendency to keep us from realizing our full potential. In destroying those dolls, I feel as though you have freed me from any remaining vestiges of responsibility I owed her memory. Like a man who has been shown that the right and wrong he believed were so rigid and true for so long are merely an illusion, I no longer fear earning her disappointment, nor understand why I feared it as long as I did."

When he faced Tsuzuki again, it was with scalpel in hand. Watching the sunlight glint off the edge of the blade, Tsuzuki had no doubt of its keenness. Nor did he have any doubt that Muraki could clearly read his panic.

He fought against his restraints. Though they fought just as hard against him. The slap of the strap pulling taut and unyielding had a ring of finality that Tsuzuki could not, would not accept. "Is that what you plan to do to me?" he growled. "Break me like I broke your dolls? Kill me? Over and over again until you're rid of me?"

That earned him a little laugh.

"As though I could ever rid myself of you, Tsuzuki," Muraki said. "As though I would ever want to. Though there is no doubt you are . . . dear to me." A sharp intake of breath when he said that word, making Tsuzuki's stomach turn. "You are an attachment I would not willingly free myself of. Not anymore."

"But there was a time?" Somehow, Tsuzuki took that as a compliment.

"Of course, there were moments," Muraki said as he contemplated the scalpel's tip. "Moments when I thought embroiling my affairs with yours was costing me more than it was worth."

"Here I had no idea I was such a thorn in your side. Maybe I should have tried harder. What changed?"

Muraki's gaze turned to him at the note of sarcasm. Was that a glare of disapproval Tsuzuki detected in the doctor's good eye?

Yet, he smiled. Set the scalpel down. Placed his hands upon the edge of the mattress. Tsuzuki could feel the dip in it beside his ribs when Muraki leaned his weight on those hands.

"Do you remember the second time we met, Tsuzuki? The young girl in the park, who had collapsed from the heat—how we set her back on her feet again, together?"

Tsuzuki remembered thinking of that incident a lot in the weeks after that case—trying to remember what his impression of Muraki had been then, before the doctor had kidnapped and tortured Hisoka to get to him. Before Tsuzuki learned the truth of who Muraki was, how he was connected to the case, and to Hisoka. He remembered asking himself how he could not have seen through the facade to the monster underneath. Or, if he had had some inkling of it, why he had not trusted his instincts.

"It was foolish of me, I see that now," Muraki said, taking Tsuzuki's silence for an affirmative, "but I truly believed that day that our relationship might turn out different from how it did, that we two might even have become allies. Dare I say it: friends? I had had this notion for some time before we met, that the two of us would meet as kindred spirits. Perhaps I allowed my hope to cloud my initial assessment of you. But I wonder. . . ."

He reached out to brush a lock of hair out of Tsuzuki's eyes, and Tsuzuki recoiled at the touch. Realized with chagrin that the cuff around his throat would not let him shy away.

Muraki saw the realization dawn on him, and it seemed only to amuse him further. "It was getting on to sunset by the time that child and her mother parted ways with us. Do you remember?" His voice was a murmur, as seductive as the first low chirps of the crickets that would have been emerging at that hour. "What few clouds were in the sky were tinged red and rose, like the first blush on the leaves in autumn, and everything was washed in a melancholy shade of gold. You looked so fragile in that light, so filled with the heaviness, the ennui, of life . . ."

He had mentioned fragility, Tsuzuki remembered. The fragility of human beings. And Tsuzuki at the time had thought it was just the physician in him speaking, though there had been something ominous in his choice of words. In the weight of them.

He had been leaning against the edge of a picnic table. And when Muraki reached out a hand to retrieve the book that lay on the table beside him, even so carefully, Tsuzuki had felt the vibration through his thigh, so near, so that for a moment it was as though the Earth itself had lurched in its orbit beneath him. He had felt like that simple act of reaching out might tip him over.

The sense of breathless vertigo came back to him as he lay strapped to the bed, the mattress dipping beneath Muraki's weight beside him. The ceiling tilting as the blood pounded in his ears. Along with Muraki's voice. "I could not help but be reminded of the first time I had seen your photograph—the one my grandfather took after your attempt to take your life. The time of day must have been the same when it was taken. The cast of the light left you seeming just the same way. You were convinced that humans were resilient beings, and the hope in your voice told me you believed that to be a virtue. Your eyes, however. . . ."

Feeling self-conscious under that gaze, Tsuzuki turned his stubbornly away.

"Your eyes told a different story."

Muraki's gaze dropped as well. To Tsuzuki's throat, bobbing beneath its collar as he swallowed. To the open top buttons of his shirt.

"You had a way of making light of the matter, but you could not entirely hide the pain underneath. Like a scar that only shows itself in a certain light. I was drawn to that pain, to the pathos in it. I wanted more—so that there would never be a time when you did not need patching up. Never a time when you did not need me." His gaze burned, like a stroking fingertip, as it traveled downward. "It was hours before we saw the child safely off. You could have left at any time—"

"I guess I just didn't trust you alone with her."

Muraki found some humor in that. "I'm sure I could have given you no reason to suspect my intentions were anything but pure up until that point."

"Nah," Tsuzuki muttered under his breath, "you just give off that vibe."

"Or, as I suspect, you were drawn to something in me as well. I like to think that, even at that second meeting, you had a sense of the connection that existed between us, even if you were not conscious of it. Your soul, once in such proximity to mine, would not be satisfied by mere moments. Otherwise, why seek me out?"

"Oh, I don't know, your kidnapping Hisoka couldn't have had anything to do with that."

"An act for which you should have despised me."

"I do—" Tsuzuki started.

"Yet your actions are not the actions of a man who despises another. Of all the opportunities you've had to put an end to me, to deal the final blow, you have always pulled back at the last second. When I have walked away, you have always chased after me. You may as well admit that you can no longer contemplate existing without me."

A memory flashed across Tsuzuki's mind, of being back on the _Queen Camellia_ , Muraki's breath across his ear, silky and numbing as a fine wine and warm as an evening bath. His hand heavy on Tsuzuki's waist, heavy as a claim, his body as unforgiving as the velvet-covered wall against Tsuzuki's back. Why didn't he run? Why didn't he fight it? It couldn't have been just his sense of honor, as the loser of a gentlemanly wager. His heart had been racing with fear, his limbs as frozen and useless to him as they were now, only no straps had been restraining him then. Even if Hisoka hadn't shown up then to save him, he had been free to choose his next move.

He had always been free to choose his next move. _So why, in God's name, have I always chosen him?_

"You could have had your way with me a dozen times over by now," he said, somehow finding even that idea easier to focus on than his own motivations. "You could take me right now if you wanted to; it's not like I can do a damn thing about it." The very idea had Tsuzuki short of breath like he hadn't felt since that night aboard the ship. Terrified that Muraki might take his prodding as an invitation, but finding the tension of waiting for it to happen almost too much to bear, as though he might explode with it.

At least then he would know what Hisoka went through, he consoled himself, and he might have some solid reason to cling to to hate Muraki as he should. At least in that way he might begin to atone for his partner's death—both of his deaths, as Tsuzuki knew now he was equally responsible for what Muraki had done as he was for destroying Hisoka's soul. "I thought you always wanted me this way. Helpless. At your mercy."

"Mm," Muraki agreed, "I could have you now. It's true."

"But you're not going to do it, are you? So it's not like I'm the only one who has to answer for his choices."

"What I want is for you to want me as I have wanted you," Muraki said. "I want you to come to me willingly. Though perhaps 'willing' is the wrong word—it implies acceptance, but not desire, not intention. I have contented myself with your _accepting_ my affections for long enough. No. What I want is what every child wants of their progenitor. To hear you say: 'You're a part of me, and I will always love you.' "

Now it was Tsuzuki's turn to force a laugh. "Now I know you really are insane."

"I suppose it does sound hopelessly sentimental when one says it aloud."

"If you expect me to come running to your arms," Tsuzuki all but spat, "like some paperback romance, you're delusional. I'll never want you like that. Because you're a part of me that I will always, _always_ hate."

"At least you concede that I _am_ yours." Muraki sighed. "But I suppose that is all I can expect you to give me freely. You cannot even accept what you are, so how can I ask you to accept me?"

"Here we go again about me being a weapon. . . ."

"You deny what's plain for any idiot to see and yet you think _I'm_ the delusional one."

But he straightened. Took a step back. Muraki did not offer his hand, but there was something in the way he gazed down at Tsuzuki, it was as if he were begging Tsuzuki to take it anyway. "What I want, Tsuzuki—what I _really_ want, at this moment, is for you to get yourself out of those bonds."

Tsuzuki almost laughed. He tested the cuffs, just to be sure he hadn't merely been tricked, and found them as tight as ever. "You've gotta be kidding me—"

"Why would I? I've seen you escape from worse, and I haven't even enchanted these in any way. No tricks. No allies rushing in at the last moment to set you free. Just you and this cot, and half a dozen simple straps."

 _And all the time in the world, I'm sure._ Sure, Tsuzuki supposed, he _could_ get out of his bed—if he was willing and able to break the bones in his hands and slide them free from their cuffs. Yet even that, he suspected, was not what Muraki intended for him to do.

"Or perhaps," the doctor said, smile itching at the corner of his lips as a new thought occurred to him, "you merely lack the proper motivation. You see this as a game, one you can simply forfeit. You merely need to wait for me to get tired of waiting for you to make the first move. But I wonder if you might be convinced to participate, if the cost of forfeit were worse." He picked up the scalpel again. "So, what do you say we do a little experiment, Tsuzuki, and see what motivates you best."

The scalpel's blade was so cold and sharp against Tsuzuki's skin, he barely noticed when it first broke through the surface.

Then the pain. Searing as the flesh parted before the blade like a ripped seam, the air itself seeming to stab and set his damaged cells on fire. Tsuzuki shut his eyes against it, clenched the scream inside himself so hard his jaw ached. But he would not give Muraki the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt, and he would not struggle. That was just what Muraki wanted.

 _It's just flesh._ Tsuzuki repeated it like a mantra in his mind. _It's only temporary. This is all temporary. This pain is temporary._

But it was also intense, and though white-hot light danced around his vision, not intense enough to let him black out. The cut was deep; that much Tsuzuki could tell. He could feel his own blood streaming hot down his sides, soaking through his shirt and tickling his back. At one point, the resonance of the blade scraping his sternum lit up his nerves, and it was all he could do to keep still. To keep from breathing, because if his lungs expanded, that would only make the wound worse. And Muraki was dragging it out so slow— _God,_ he was so slow. He only stopped when he reached the point above Tsuzuki's diaphragm.

By that time, the top of the cut had already ceased to bleed. For now, every gasping breath felt like it was ripping Tsuzuki apart anew; but a few more minutes and the two sides of the incision would stitch themselves back together again, leaving no sign of his ersatz vivisection.

Tsuzuki knew Muraki was only too aware of that when he bent over his handiwork, and murmured: "So, pain isn't the answer. Then again, perhaps pain is too easily ignored. After all, if death has already lost its sting, what hope does the blade have? And you've experienced so much pain already.

"But perhaps . . ."

With the one hand, Muraki let the scalpel fall back on its tray on the side table. A flick of his other wrist undid the next button of Tsuzuki's shirt; and the press of Muraki's lips to the same spot not a moment later nearly made Tsuzuki jump as much as the start of the incision. At least he had seen the incision coming.

"Perhaps pleasure will move you," Muraki breathed against Tsuzuki's bare skin, "where pain does not. I suppose it all depends—" Another button gone, another kiss. "—on how badly you want me to stop."

So, so badly. But Tsuzuki would not say so. His breath hitched in his chest as Muraki's mouth trailed lower, continuing the line of the incision, until the warmth of his breath filled the cup of Tsuzuki's navel. It was a different kind of agony that made Tsuzuki's pulse race and his nerves scream out against his will. And a different kind of fear that had him in its grip: a fear that a part of him actually liked what Muraki was doing.

He was petrified by it. His limbs trembled despite his attempts to control them—past any thought of struggling against his bonds. Just wait for it to be over. Like a prey animal, caught in the jaws of death. _Just stay still, and wait for it to be over._ Because no matter what he did now, Muraki would win. And if he succumbed to what he couldn't help but feel, what he didn't want to feel, how could Tsuzuki face himself without despising himself?

Muraki circled the depression with his tongue. Tsuzuki tried and failed to keep count of the tiles on the ceiling; any attempt to distract himself from that gentle friction only made him more aware. Strange how at that moment, it was Hisoka he wanted to beg to forgive him, though he was no longer there to forgive. Yet it felt somehow like it was his memory Tsuzuki was betraying. Or the possibility, of something they never truly had but that he only now could appreciate once any hope of it was gone forever. _Forgive me . . . for being so weak. . . ._

But, as though Muraki had heard him, he went no further. And when he began tugging at the straps that pinned Tsuzuki's hips and thighs, it became apparent in the resignation of his movements that it was not simply to free Tsuzuki's body for his own use.

It was just to free Tsuzuki.

"There was a time you would have begged me to stop," he observed with a sigh.

"What, getting nostalgic for the old days? This can't be very exciting for you, my not having any fight left in me to put up." Tsuzuki's attempt at sarcasm was shaky through the adrenaline. There was something darkly humorous in this, if he cared to see it. Like being told once the noose was on and the last words said, that it was all just a joke, he could go home.

If only that were the case. If only he _could_ go home—or had one to return to.

"Maybe I just realized while you were lying there like a corpse—" Ankles freed, Muraki moved on to the collar. "—that this wasn't what I wanted. I thought we had made progress, I thought you were beginning to understand your position, your purpose. But I see now I expected too much of you too soon."

"My purpose." _If he says one more word about me being a weapon. . . ._

At Muraki's sideways glance, Tsuzuki had to wonder if the doctor really _could_ read his thoughts. Or perhaps he was just that transparent.

"You eat my food and sleep half the day," he said coolly, "and what thanks do I get for my hospitality? You break my possessions, and when I actually require you to perform a task, you lie still and feel sorry for yourself. As if—what—if you just close your eyes all of this will go away? If that's what you call self-preservation, it's no wonder the people around you have a tendency to drop dead. Or dead-er, as the case may be. If you can't stand up for yourself, how can they expect you to have their backs when they need you most—"

The cuff encircling his left wrist came free in Muraki's hands, and Tsuzuki did not wait for the other to be released. He swung at the doctor with his free arm, satisfied when his elbow connected and Muraki reeled back off the bed.

Satisfied that he had caused that man even a little pain, but it wasn't enough. Now that Tsuzuki had a taste of it, it wasn't enough to repay everything he had suffered. He felt something snap in his other wrist when he jumped off of the bed, but didn't care. The scalpel, still wet with his own blood, found its way into his hand as though that was where it had wanted to be all along. Tsuzuki lashed out with it while Muraki was still off his guard, aiming for the eyes. If Muraki were so taken with that picture of him after his suicide attempt all those many years ago, he may as well know how it had felt.

Muraki regained his wits quickly enough to dodge; but a line of red blooming across his cheek told Tsuzuki his aim had been true enough to do at least _some_ damage.

And when Muraki wiped his cheek, and saw the blood smeared across the back of his hand, he chuckled. " _That's_ more like it, Tsuzuki! Now, _this_ is the side of you I've been waiting to see!"

But when Tsuzuki lunged towards him again, it was without the same results. Before he could even tell where he went wrong, Muraki had blocked his blow, seized his arm, and wrenched it hard behind Tsuzuki's back. A cry of pain escaped Tsuzuki before he could catch it—and before he was pinned face-first to the bed he had just left. Muraki's arm snaked under his shoulder and his hand pressed firm against the back of Tsuzuki's head, ensuring he had nowhere to go.

Nonetheless, Muraki breathed an impressed "My, my". As he turned Tsuzuki's right hand over in his grip, Tsuzuki could feel what had caught his attention: the cuff that had been around his right wrist was still attached, dangling a short length of the woven strap that had been torn in two. "You see, Tsuzuki? I knew you had it in you all along. You only had to believe in yourself, and your bonds would have given you as much resistance as if they were made of paper."

Muraki gave the strap a sharp tug, and the scalpel fell from Tsuzuki's hand before he could stop himself. He bit back a cry as his bruised bones were manhandled further, his wince turning into a snarl as he felt Muraki lean in over him to whisper in his ear: "That was quite a blow you landed. Not nearly good enough, but a decent start. So? What else do you have? I'm sure you need more than a taste to satisfy you. Surely you want to get even with me for trussing you up. Fight back!"

What, he actually wanted Tsuzuki to strike him again? Then again, it should not have come as any surprise that Muraki might have masochistic as well as sadistic tendencies. When it came down to it, there wasn't much of a difference. And Tsuzuki couldn't deny that when he had held the scalpel in his hand, it had itched to do more damage than the one shallow cut it had made.

But that wasn't what this was about. It wasn't really a tit-for-tat Muraki was after. Like a cat with its prey, Tsuzuki didn't provide much entertainment if he didn't struggle.

"You're not really over those stupid dolls," he grunted back. "Are you, Muraki? And you know something? I'm glad I broke them all. I'd do it again. Now you know how it feels, to have something you love taken from you—"

Wrong thing to say. The hand on the back of his head tightened in his hair, wrenching his neck uncomfortably backwards.

"I could cut you in half," Muraki growled through his teeth.

"Then why don't you?" For the briefest moment, Tsuzuki would have welcomed the pain. He would have welcomed a reason, a real reason, to feel like all this hatred and righteous anger that should have burned furiously inside him was worth holding on to.

But the fight died. All the tension left his body, and all the pain went with it as he let himself sag against the bed. Even the unnatural angle of his arm stopped hurting in that moment. The moment he surrendered himself to his despair was the moment he stopped caring about anything at all.

"Do whatever you want," Tsuzuki tried not to whimper. "You can't possibly hurt me more than I've already hurt myself. I destroyed everything I still cared about, because of you. There's nothing left for you to take. So, no. I'm not going to fight you. I'm not going to play your stupid little game. The sooner you accept that, the better."

In his mind's eye, he could see Muraki's features twisted in displeasure. Which was worse, Tsuzuki wondered? The displeasure of hearing his own words tossed back at him, or of failing once again to make Tsuzuki bend to his will?

With one last menacing shove, Muraki released him. He raked a hand through his hair to push it out of his eyes, his intake of breath shuddering with barely contained rage. And as he did so, the cut on his cheek stood out clearly, the flow of blood having stopped, even if the flesh around it had not yet begun to heal.

"We shall just have to see about that, won't we? We'll just have to see how long you can keep up this pretense, that you are not what you damned well know yourself to be."

* * *

Sex clubs like this one had a very particular appeal to Muraki. The flagrancy of flesh disgusted him, but somehow in the disgust was a kind of intrigue. And somehow, the less was left to the imagination, the more a hunk of meat the human body resembled.

But for people-watching, there was hardly a better place. Kokakurou this was not; the dim neon lights and flimsy curtains of reflective beads pretending to provide privacy did more to testify to the club's seedy qualities than disguise them. Just the same, the patrons of this establishment came expecting anonymity, or at least the understanding such venues cultivated that any recognition of a familiar or famous face would be kept to oneself. Entertainers came here, seeking the privacy of the club's cubicles, but more often, businessmen and bureaucrats and politicians, the same Golden Triangle that not only ran Japan but kept Muraki and Oriya employed in their respective trades and services.

Nor were humans the only ones to find occupation here. He recognized the demonic in a young woman clad only in lingerie who was on her way to a meeting with patrons. It wasn't the brilliant red hair that gave her away so much as the brilliant red eyes. Though they glowed their natural color for only a second, it was enough for an understanding to pass between them.

Muraki turned back to the bar and his drink. He might have only waited a few minutes before he heard the impatient sigh at the stool next to him. "You rang?" said Zepar in an overly bored voice.

If Muraki had to put a label on the devil's new look, he would perhaps have called it Going Legit. Zepar hadn't bothered with choosing a face from Muraki's memories, instead taking the face and haircut and suit of a very well-paid host.

And he would have wagered that Zepar had been earning that pay. "You seem tired," Muraki observed. "Been keeping busy?"

"The work of the King of Hell's right-hand man never ends," Zepar sighed as he helped himself to Muraki's drink.

Muraki ordered another with a gesture. "And judging by how you're sitting," he said to the devil beside him, "I would guess she's been riding you hard."

Zepar scowled. "What do you want, Muraki? All joking aside, I _am_ a very busy devil, and I have far more important things to do than exchange witty banter with you all evening. So if you wouldn't mind getting to the point of telling me why my legion called me here—"

"I wish to see Ukyou."

Zepar blinked; then laughed. "Uh, you're delusional if you think that's going to happen."

"It was not a request, Zepar."

But something was wrong. Muraki could feel it. Zepar should have felt compelled by his nature to obey Muraki's command, or at very least tremble at it. Yet to Muraki's disappointment, the devil showed no subservient reaction to his voice at all.

And judging by Zepar's grin, he knew just how much that stung. "Ah, I see what's going on here," he cooed. "Well, you should know, Kazu-kun, it isn't going to work. You commanded control over me so long as you and my mistress still had an open deal on the table. But that's been fulfilled now, thanks to you. Your debts are paid, your account closed. You should be happy about that."

But Muraki wasn't happy about it. And he was furious that Zepar would dare to use Ukyou's name for him against him, and with her inflection. It implied the devil had gotten close enough to her to learn of it, close enough to peer inside her mind, and that was too close.

"I haven't forgotten the terms of that deal," Muraki growled through his teeth. "It was a child of my blood I promised, and it was a child of my blood I would have given. I have no use for another Muraki. But Ukyou is outside the letter of the deal—"

"Yes, but so long as that child is still in her, she won't be going anywhere. My mistress has much invested in this child's health and well-being, and we believe that the best way to ensure that is to keep Ukyou well looked after. And safe from all harm."

"Safe," Muraki sneered. "In Hell."

Zepar blinked, but his sympathy was disingenuous. "Oh, I can assure you, she is being taken care of. She is surrounded by all the comforts she was accustomed to—well, except perhaps a view with a blue sky and green trees, but we have to work with the resources at our disposal. We even have a dedicated staff of couriers bringing food from the living world to her every day."

"And what's to happen to her once the child is born?"

"She will be returned to her home—or, near enough to it—no questions asked. We will have no more use for her then."

"I'm to trust your word that she will be returned alive?" As Muraki very much doubted that any of the devils of Hell cared the least bit whether she survived giving birth to their savior. Or even if she did, if she would still be sane by the end of it.

It was that thought that pushed his hand. He had thought this decision would be difficult for him, but hearing Zepar now, remembering what he had given up, it was all too simple. "Tell your master I propose a trade."

"I don't have to do a thing you say," Zepar muttered, but Muraki spoke right over him.

"Tell her I will deliver Tsuzuki to her in person if she returns Ukyou to my care. Immediately."

Zepar made a show of thinking it over; and for the briefest of moments, Muraki thought he might have persuaded the devil to at least take the offer back to his realm for consideration.

But Zepar's mocking laughter shattered that hope. "Mm, I don't think so. You see, as much as my mistress would _love_ to have Tsuzuki by her side, fighting for her, I doubt you can give her any guarantees that he won't try to flee back to his own world as soon as she turns her back. Whereas an _infant_ is a blank slate. It can be raised from day one to be loyal. It will defend Hell to its dying breath because Hell will be the only home it ever knows."

Control. That was what it came down to, and Muraki knew that long before this confrontation. Astaroth had never been able to control Tsuzuki—not even Enma could claim that accomplishment. Yet a child, raised to think of Ashtaroth as its mother—and perhaps, when it was grown, something more—was a sure bet.

"Wait a moment." Zepar narrowed his eyes, making quite a show of studying Muraki, of peering into his soul. "I think I see what this is about. The honeymoon isn't living up to the hype. Experiencing a little trouble in paradise? Tsuzuki not cooperating nearly as well as you hoped? Big surprise there."

Even with the wall Muraki put up around his mind, the devil was disturbingly close to the mark. Muraki made every effort not to give any external sign of just how close he had come.

Smug grin on his lips, Zepar sat back, reveling in the other's misfortune. "Sorry, Kazu-kun. No take-backs. If Tsuzuki's proving defective, the one you should be talking to is the guy who made him that way." And he jabbed a needling finger in Muraki's direction before turning back to his drink. "Didn't your mother ever tell you to play gently with your toys?"

"You don't believe I could simply be asking you this out of the goodness of my heart?" Muraki said, a grin to match Zepar's to show how much he despised the devil. "Do the noble thing, Zepar. Convince your master to let the woman go. She's done nothing to deserve Hell, whereas Tsuzuki—"

"Is no innocent? Yes, well, perhaps my mistress and I don't believe your sainted Ukyou is entirely lily-white either. More like ecru, the way I see it." Zepar skimmed his fingertip over the rim of his tumbler, before touching it lazily to his lips, sucking the drop of liquor that was smeared there. "And that's before she got herself knocked up by a shinigami, even. Which, by the way, we're still trying to make sense of."

The blood boiled in Muraki's veins. He could feel his racing heart pushing at his lungs, pushing at the muscles in his arms that longed to seize Zepar and slam him into the bar, gouge his pretty face on the broken glass. But he would not break his composure. He would not let that sniveling demon claim the slightest victory.

"The mechanics of it, I mean," Zepar went on as though it was Muraki who wasn't following. "For something that's dead to create life—it shouldn't be possible, you see. The other bit doesn't surprise me in the least, frankly. It's the story of my life, after all. She must have seen something in him that reminded her of you. Only you weren't there—"

"I'm warning you, Zepar. You may no longer answer to my command, but I can still inflict pain on your kind."

That threat, uttered in a way that would have earned him swift obedience only a few months ago, was met with a pitying cluck of the tongue. "Oh, Kazu. . . . You say that as though I wouldn't enjoy it! And King Ashtaroth will not give up the child, no matter what or who you offer as a trade. You and I both know that, so I don't know why you waste my time. Surely not for the pleasure of my company."

He raised his glass towards his lips, but before it could get there, Muraki knocked it away. The dull ring of it hitting the floor went unnoticed in the noise of the club, but the violence was not lost on Zepar. His eyes went wide as Muraki seized his wrist hard enough to twist bones out of joint. At the connection, he grasped for a lifeline in Muraki's mind, not thinking, the choice coming out of pure instinct.

And Muraki was clenching his jaw so hard, trying to hold back what he really wanted to do to the devil, that when he laughed even he was surprised by the murderous intent in it. "Oh, Zepar. If you were looking for a face that would save you from my displeasure, you chose the absolute worst one."

It was Saki who looked back at him. That was, a semblance of Saki. Muraki could not remember ever seeing a look of such concern for his own safety on his half-brother's face, though it would have been quite at home on his sixteen-year-old self.

"You humans all think you're some hot shit, don't you?" Zepar snarled. "But I see humanity for what it really is: the dungheap of Creation. You think I'm afraid of you? You're just the turd that floats to the top."

If there was supposed to be a threat in there somewhere, or an insult, Muraki missed it. Abruptly it hit him, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud bringing back all the depth and relief to the world. This was absurd. This devil was nothing to him—no more an annoyance than a mosquito buzzing its tiny voice around his ear. Why worry himself over its insignificant little bite when there were much larger things more worthy of rousing his passions over? Why make a scene over a little gnat?

When Zepar pulled back against his grip, Muraki released him without any ado. Zepar could change his face till Christ returned on a burning cloud for all he cared. He could go picking a fight all he wanted. Muraki would find a way to get Ukyou back, _and_ get what he wanted out of Tsuzuki, but he would give this petty creature nothing. Nothing.

With little more than a "We're done," he stood and swept his coat over his shoulders. Left a few bills on the bar, and did not look back as he headed for the door.

"That's better," Zepar said after him. "Run along back to your prize." And his derisive laughter echoed in Muraki's mind as he strode off into the night.


	12. No regrets

"I can't believe they let you have books," Keijou said, skimming the titles. "They were just going to let me rot away from boredom in my cell."

"Focalor brought them to me when I asked for something to read. At first it was stuff in cuneiform, ancient Hebrew, Greek . . . Which, of course, I couldn't read."

Ukyou caught herself almost smiling at the memory, and told herself to stop. The devil wasn't doing any of this for her, which he was fond of reminding her every opportunity he got. It just so happened that what benefitted her benefitted him as well. No matter how sympathetic the face he wore seemed, she could not let herself forget that it was a cruel and calculating monster that lurked beneath. "Finally I had to ask him for something in Japanese."

Keijou's wandering fingers hit upon a scroll titled _The Most High Lord of Yomi and Divers Denizens of His Court._ It looked ancient. He imagined a window into the Enma-cho of a thousand years ago, populated by demons at the height of their political power over the judgment of the dead. A golden age—like what they showed in comics. It wouldn't hurt to take a look. "Do you mind?" he asked Ukyou.

Who, from her place on the other side of the room, shook her head. "Help yourself."

So far Keijou had been nothing but amicable, but Ukyou couldn't help her prejudices. He looked too much like the toughs of her memory, with his long ponytail and airs of machismo. On top of that, he was a shinigami, and her track record with those hadn't been so good so far. What was Focalor really thinking, putting him in charge of her safety, like a fox guarding the hen house? Was this his idea of revenge for her attempt to kill the child?

 _I guess I'm here to keep you from hurting yourself,_ Keijou had said when he introduced himself—all but pushed into the cell by her guards like a new stud in an endangered animal breeding program. She had cringed at his lack of tact, conscious that the guards were probably right outside, listening to every word they said and laughing, casting bets about them.

They did things like that when they thought she couldn't hear. Or perhaps just didn't care if she could. Even after they had moved her to this roomier cell, with a proper bed, plumbing instead of a chamber pot, a barred window—for all the good it did her to look down on lava fields and torture pools—and soft coverings on the stone surfaces, they still made wagers with one another on whether she would eat her dinner or not, cry in her sleep or not. Try to kill her child again or not.

This latest injustice, adding the shinigami Keijou to the mix, was just kicking her while she was down. She didn't need another pair of eyes on her every moment. And she sure didn't need a colleague of Tsuzuki's watching her, with her belly growing every week. . . .

She folded her cardigan around herself, thankful for the thickness of it, and hugged her middle. If they planned on keeping Keijou here indefinitely, he would find out soon enough. But she certainly wasn't ready to volunteer anything to a near-total stranger.

As he picked up the scroll, Keijou spotted the bowl of grapes. "At least they're keeping _you_ fed."

"They don't feed you?" That actually did pique Ukyou's curiosity.

Keijou shrugged. "I don't _need_ to eat. I guess they thought food would be wasted on me. Doesn't mean I don't get hungry, though."

"Well," Ukyou said, "I do need to eat, and they need to keep me alive any way they can."

"Awfully generous of them."

"Hardly. Apparently I'm not allowed to die."

She wasn't sure how much Focalor had told the shinigami when he gave him this task, but Keijou looked up at her at that comment with a concern and sympathy that Ukyou had given up expecting to find in a place like this. It was almost enough to bring tears to her eyes. It was enough; she just refused to let Keijou see them before she knew whether she could really trust him.

"Hey," he said. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you. Not as long as I'm here."

"That's not exactly reassuring coming from a shinigami," Ukyou said as steadily as she was able. Would not apologize that it came out more as an accusation. "I've noticed they have a tendency to break everything they touch. Isn't that what you're supposed to do anyway? Take the souls of the living?"

"Not here. And besides, not anymore."

As for Keijou, he had to admit it bothered him that she kept herself at such a distance. Like she feared he would rape her as soon as touch her. Whatever could have happened to scar her so? Besides the plunging headfirst into a world of demons and shinigami while still alive, that was.

Had Agrippina ever been so vulnerable, so afraid? She had told him stories about the leper asylum where she had been left as a child, and of the nuns in charge of it whose faith she admired even when they told her her disease was punishment for some sin of her past. Keijou didn't understand it, but he told himself they came from different generations, even if they had been roughly the same age when they died. Agrippina had never seemed the type to succumb to fear and loneliness as long as he knew her, but she wouldn't be the first shinigami to compensate for pain in life with strength in death.

He wished there were some way to give that strength to Ukyou. She looked like she was in need of a little hope.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "I may be dead, but I'm still human. One of only two in this place. Er, if you don't count all the dead ones being punished out there."

We _are_ being punished, Ukyou thought. But she said, "Is this your way of saying we humans have to stick together?" and Keijou didn't care just now if she was only humoring him.

"That's right. We're a rare breed."

Focalor might not have meant to, but he'd given Keijou back the hope he thought was gone with Agrippina. _That's right: I_ am _still human._ He just wondered how long he could keep that true. Whether there was any way to get out of this place with one's humanity intact.

"The grapes actually aren't that bad. Here, you probably need to keep your strength up more than I do—"

Keijou tried to hand her the bowl, but it was too much too soon. Ukyou shied away when he came close, backing up against the wall. It was impossible not to take some offense.

Then again, it seemed impossible for Ukyou to hide her anxiety. She thought about apologizing, or pretending she had shied away for some other reason, but as she doubted Keijou would believe her, she didn't see what good it would do.

He backed away, making soothing sounds, his free hand raised in a calming gesture. Ukyou said, not meeting his eyes: "Did Focalor happen to mention, when he set you up for this, how long you would be staying? I mean, was this supposed to be a nine-to-five gig . . .?"

"I got the impression it was around the clock."

While Keijou found himself a seat on the opposite end of the room, Ukyou sighed—or swore; he couldn't quite tell which—and covered her face. Even at a distance, he could see how her hand trembled. I wonder if this is a little what it's like, he thought, to be abandoned in some strange new place, knowing you may never see your own home or loved ones again. When he went through his own period of coming to grips with his death, it had been excruciatingly difficult some nights, to accept the permanence of his condition; but it must have been something else entirely for the still-living, to not know. To not know whether or not you were ever going to escape, or what sort of fate awaited you, what possible pains. To not know if the person sitting across from you was going to hurt you if you closed your eyes.

"But, hey," he said, a sudden idea making him shoot back to his feet, "if we are stuck here together, that doesn't mean we can't both still have our privacy! We can put some of these rugs up like a curtain—like a divider, you know, like in that old movie, er, What's It Called, with Clark Gable."

" _It Happened One Night_ ," Ukyou supplied despondently.

"Okay, yeah. So if you get tired of looking at my mug, you can draw it closed and not have to feel like I'm watching you change or sleep or anything."

He mimed how it would work—not a difficult concept to grasp, really, and besides, Ukyou had seen the movie—and something in her started to unwind. She had been so tense, so on her guard ever since arriving here, that the thought she might actually be able to relax in someone else's company, confident that she would come to no harm, was a very enticing one.

"Thank you. That would be a good start." But she couldn't drop her guard yet. She had already made the mistake of not keeping Tsuzuki at the distance she should have.

* * *

Nonomiya heaved a heavy sigh as she entered the locker room between the pool and gym, and felt all the stress of the busy last few days start to leave her. She never would have thought she could be so grateful that her path after death had led her to Peacekeeping, rather than the taking of souls and ending of life that faced Summons agents day after day. In life, her passion had been to help others; but helping them into the grave was a raw deal the guilt of which she only now knew first-hand. She couldn't imagine carrying that guilt around for ten years, let alone the seventy-plus that Tsuzuki had.

Now that Kurosaki was back, and Dr. Akiyama had been stopped, maybe she'd get a break from the emotional and karmic weight on her of all those souls. Some laps in the pool would help to shift her thoughts to less troubling matters as well.

She let her tired eyes fall closed for just one second and nearly ran into Kazuma, who was wiping the sweat from her own workout out of her eyes.

A split second from collision, they grabbed for each other, uttering quick apologies on instinct.

"Kochou!" Kazuma said once crisis had been averted. For the briefest moment, Nonomiya wondered from her tone of voice if her old partner missed her as much as she missed Kazuma, but the next, a trace of resentment wiped the feeling away. "What are you doing here?"

"I _was_ just going for a swim." The chill that worked itself into her voice was a defensive reaction, a shield Nonomiya raised around herself. "You know I like to swim laps when I need to de-stress."

Kazuma bristled. "I know that. I meant why now?"

"Why not now?" It was the middle of the day, not when Nonomiya usually went to the pool, that much was true; but she had to work with what Summons's sometimes erratic schedule would allow. Or were her suspicions correct, and Kazuma was trying to avoid her? "But I'm not really sure I want one, if I'm going to have company for it. Excuse me. . . ."

She turned to leave. But Kazuma's harsh "Hey!" stopped her in her tracks. "Is this how you're going to be now every time we run into each other?"

Nonomiya could feel the heat rising to her cheeks, but she willed herself to calm. "How am I supposed to act, Shin? I'm not sure anymore."

"How about like a friend?"

That took gall, even for Shin. "A friend, really? You made it quite clear enough to me that friendship doesn't rank all that high in your priorities when you let our chief transfer me without even saying a word to me about it. I thought partners were supposed to stick up for one another. I could have at least used a sympathetic ear. Instead, next thing I hear of you, you're leading a raid of the Castle of Candles?"

"I was doing my job!" Kazuma shot back. "There is a _reason_ we're here, in case you've forgotten. And despite what some of us seem to believe, it isn't up to us to just make up what we think is right as we go along. You can't honestly be holding this against me!"

And Nonomiya could hardly believe that just a moment ago, seeing Shin again, fresh from her workout and gleaming, she had genuinely thought for all of a second that they would go back to the way things had been before, like the last month and a half never happened.

Now, the longer she had to look at her old partner, the more she seethed. And she hated herself for it.

"I don't need this right now," Nonomiya said, turning away. "I came here to relieve some stress, not add a heaping scoop of it."

She could hear Kazuma calling halfheartedly to her as she walked away. She did not see Kazuma slam her fist into the nearest locker door and dent it, but she could hear it. And hoped it hurt.

* * *

Arguing with Kochou was the _last_ thing Kazuma wanted to do. It was only when she saw her old partner with her own eyes again that she realized just how much she missed her. She couldn't just forget about everything the two of them had been through over the last several years as partners. And as friends. Dare she still say lovers? Affections waxed and waned in this place—a luxury of being dead—but they never really went away.

But forgetting was one thing. Forgiving was another matter entirely. She could tell herself that too much had happened to forgive so easily, but wasn't that exactly what she most wanted to do? Forgive? Why did doing the right thing have to be so damned hard?

When she spotted Imai at one of the cafeteria tables, going over a stack of printouts over his coffee and _anpan_ roll, she welcomed the itch of curiosity as just what she needed to take her mind off of Kochou. "Gushoushin gave you what you needed, did they?" she said as she helped herself to the seat opposite him, and started spreading out her own lunch.

"Yeah. Those bird guys work fast."

Must have been something of a shock for him when he first laid eyes on the Gushoushin. They were kind of a shock for anybody. Kazuma could still recall her mortification when she realized they weren't animatronic stuffed animals. She suspected the Elder still held that against her, judging by the side-eye he gave her any time she needed to visit the library. "And? Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Well, I think so." Imai gave the printout he was currently reading a hard flick. "Turns out this Kurosaki kid and I _did_ cross paths. We were both working the same case, as a matter of fact, the Livertaker murders in Kumamoto last fall. The reason he looked familiar was probably exactly as you said. I must have seen him on the street and—well, he does have a look about him that's hard to forget, doesn't he? I think it's those eerie eyes. They must have just stuck in my head. I had no idea he was a shinigami at the time, of course."

"Living people rarely do. If we were obvious about it, we'd all be in trouble, wouldn't we? To you he probably seemed like a regular high school student."

"Well, he didn't look like a dead guy, that's for sure. I hope I would have noticed _that_." Imai furrowed his brow at a sudden thought. "You know, now that I think about it, I knew something wasn't right about that case. The whole time it felt like someone or something was looking over my shoulder every step of the way—even actively trying to obstruct my investigation. Damn it, I _told_ Asai there was no way I just misplaced my badge!"

Kazuma's sympathies went out to Imai. It had to be frustrating being the target of a shinigami's pranks, not knowing the true cause and feeling like one was starting to lose their sanity.

"So?" she said. "Do you feel better, knowing where you remembered him from? Feel like you can put this matter behind you?"

Imai nodded. "You know, I think I do? I guess my obsessing over this mystery of where I'd seen the kid before was like this unconscious refusal to accept that I was really dead. Like by clinging to that, I was trying to cling to my past life, as if I could somehow get that back. Does that make any sense?"

"More than you think," Kazuma assured him. "It's also perfectly normal. We all go through something similar when we get here. The confusion, the regrets, the wishing we had a do-over. The desperation to find out not just how, but _why_ we died. Maybe having the experience you had as a detective, you were just able to get through it a little faster than most."

She reached for her drink; but, not watching what she was doing, ended up knocking the cup over with the back of her hand before she could stop herself. Kazuma swore at her clumsiness—this was what she got for letting her feelings about Kochou distract her—and prepared herself for the messy splash.

But Imai's hand shot out before the cup could tip even forty-five degrees. With a nonchalant "Whoopsie-daisy" he righted it again.

Only when he realized what he'd done did his eyes snap to Kazuma's, wide with disbelief.

"How did you do that?" she asked him.

"I-I don't know!" He blinked. "This is going to sound crazy, but I knew you were going to knock it over. I was . . ." He had to weigh his words, like he didn't believe them himself. "I was waiting for that to happen. I, uh, take it that sort of thing _isn't_ normal?"

* * *

The Summons office may have been at half capacity, but it was still too busy for Hisoka's liking. It didn't sit well with him that he might even now be being spied on, and he had only barely been able to narrow down the field of suspects.

So when Tatsumi passed by his desk, he didn't waste the opportunity to snag his attention.

"Hey, Tatsumi?" Hisoka grabbed the two folders that were all ready to go beside his keyboard. "Natsume and I finished our reports on what happened at Akiyama's office. I wanted to make sure I got them into your hands personally."

As he had hoped, the gravity in his words wasn't lost on the secretary. Tatsumi's eyes met his, full of meaning. "I appreciate it. And did you make any headway on that other matter?"

"Actually, I was hoping to discuss it with you."

Tatsumi's mix of anticipation and anxiety was an almost tangible thing when the two had closed themselves off in the conference room. Hisoka couldn't blame him. He expected to find out someone he trusted was a traitor. Hisoka would hardly have felt any different if their situations were reversed.

"Did you find our mole?" Tatsumi asked him in a low voice.

"Not yet. But I know who it isn't. Well, one more person that it isn't. Natsume and I had a bit of a heart-to-heart." There was more to it than that, of course, more that weighed on Hisoka's conscience; but he had given his word that he would be discreet about Natsume's plans if he thought they warranted it, and he thought they warranted it. At least for the time being. "Long story short, he checks out. His loyalty is to Summons. So is K's."

That was stretching it a bit, but Hisoka was confident that in Natsume's mind, his motives were all to protect the people he cared about, and many of them were indeed in Summons. And K—well, she was completely devoted to Natsume. As much as any cat could be devoted to another being, anyway.

"I always knew we had K's loyalty," Tatsumi said, which almost made a somewhat flabbergasted Hisoka ask if he was the only one who had been completely in the dark about the cat's status as a shinigami in her own right. Tatsumi let out a long sigh as he leaned back against the table, and it was clear Hisoka's news had come to him as something of a relief. "It never even crossed my mind to suspect Natsume, though I suppose it should have."

"You should have suspected everyone. Myself included."

But Hisoka knew Tatsumi could never do that, and he was grateful for it, though it was a weakness. "Natsume went out of his way to retrieve some sensitive materials for me," Tatsumi said. "He put himself in harm's way for this department. I suppose now that I think about it, he could have easily done so because he already had a deal with Todoroki."

"That was exactly my thinking. But after discussing it thoroughly with him, reading his feelings on the matter, I believe he was being truthful. He would never have sold us out to Todoroki. He thinks of that man as an enemy."

"Yes, I suppose he would. After Peacekeeping treated him like a criminal."

"Do they think he's still in contact with Muraki?" At Tatsumi's confused look, Hisoka elaborated, "Because of the way he died, I mean?"

"No. Because of what he did to Tsuzuki."

Now it was Hisoka's turn to be confused.

Tatsumi backpedaled. "You still don't know what happened between them." It wasn't a question; the answer was clear on Hisoka's face.

"It didn't come up." And now Hisoka kicked himself for forgetting to ask. The question had been weighing on him so heavily when he went to confront Natsume. "But you know, don't you? And don't tell me it's none of my business and that I should ask him if I really want to know, like everyone does. You were there. Which means you aren't betraying anyone's confidence by telling me what you witnessed."

For a moment, Hisoka was sure Tatsumi would shut down the conversation again. But he must have decided that what Hisoka said rang true. Or true enough.

"If you know how Natsume's connected to Muraki," he said somberly, "then he must have told you how he died."

"Astaroth," was all Hisoka said.

Tatsumi nodded. "Well, what he may not have told you—and I wouldn't blame him for it; I would be ashamed to discuss it if I were he—is that the manner of his death made him a magnet for demonic energies. Denizens of Hell cannot get into Meifu themselves, you see, the barrier around this world is too strong; but if they can latch themselves onto a shinigami in the living world, they can ride his body back home."

"Is that what happened? He got possessed on a case?" If so, Hisoka's sympathies went out to his partner more than ever before. Why hadn't Natsume felt safe enough with him to volunteer that?

Though perhaps Hisoka already knew the answer, having seen the same thing happen to Tsuzuki.

"He didn't know it had happened," Tatsumi said. "Possession can occur subtly sometimes, and something, some . . . mark must have been placed on Natsume's soul at the moment of his death, that was perceived as an invitation by demons. Sending him back to Chijou was like dropping chum in shark-infested waters, irresistible, and each time he went up there he picked up more of them."

"Just how many?" Hisoka started to ask, but at Tatsumi's shake of the head, he figured the number didn't much matter.

"Enough," said Tatsumi. "Enough that he wasn't acting like himself for about a week before it all came to a head. We should have noticed the signs. But the fact of the matter is we didn't, and mortals who weren't meant to die for some time lost their lives before we could do anything about it. Tsuzuki tried to stop him, he put himself in harm's way, and that bought time for reinforcements to arrive at the scene. At great pains to himself, however. The demons possessing Natsume must have thought it was more fun to torture someone they couldn't actually kill."

Hisoka remembered what great pains Tsuzuki had been willing to put himself through to keep Hisoka from further harm on their first case. Even knowing Hisoka was as dead as he, he still threw himself into the line of fire, and suffered the greater wounds. He would have hesitated even less had a mortal life been on the line. "Did you perform a _reibaku_?"

Tatsumi shook his head. "Chief Konoe wasn't strong enough for that, and Natsume's soul probably wouldn't have been either. It was a ritual exorcism. It took so long, and had so many setbacks and participants trying different methods, none of us was sure it would actually work until it was over. But at the end of it, once he was deemed clear of any possessions, seals were placed on Natsume's soul to ensure that a repeat of the incident would never happen. He's still a magnet to demons, only now in a repulsive rather than attractive fashion. Likely he always will be."

"That explains a lot," said Hisoka. Like how well Natsume had stood his ground against Zepar, and perhaps even why their attempt to capture a shoggoth had ended in its being vaporized. "But I didn't know you could put a seal on a person's soul." For that matter, he hadn't received any feeling of what Natsume had gone through when they talked before. Hisoka had to hand it to him, he was very talented at hiding his past pain.

"It's not unlike what Muraki placed on you."

"That's different, it's a curse," Hisoka started to say. But Tatsumi continued over him: "Yet you carry that with you just the same, don't you? Even being forced to regrow your skin couldn't wipe it away. It's an indelible part of you now. Only Natsume's seal is to keep dangerous influences out, rather than keep them in."

That was an odd way of phrasing it. Muraki cursed me to keep me in pain, Hisoka wanted to remind him, but something about Tatsumi's choice of words stopped him short. What did Tatsumi think he was keeping in, exactly? Or did he just mean the memory of the night Hisoka was attacked—the memory of pain?

"I shouldn't have told you all of that," Tatsumi said, suddenly contrite. "I'm not sure Natsume would want you to know if he chose not to broach the topic himself. Particularly since Tsuzuki always blamed him for not knowing he was possessed. He seemed to believe Natsume could have stopped himself from killing the people he did, if he'd only tried a little harder to control himself."

"I think maybe now he would see things differently." Certainly Sargatanas had demonstrated to them all how easily a devil could overpower a human mind, even warp a person's purest feelings and use them as weapons against their hosts and hosts' loved ones, leaving the host little more than a passenger in his own body all the while.

"Maybe," Tatsumi agreed. "But as far as I know Tsuzuki never forgave him. The two of them never spoke after Natsume was transferred to Accounting."

That, too, Hisoka could understand. Tsuzuki may have had a giving heart, but anyone had only to look to Terazuma to see that when he held a grudge, he clung to it tightly, with relish.

And maybe that was the key to uncovering this whole mole business, Hisoka thought with a sudden spark of inspiration. If guilt didn't succeed in coaxing out a confession, maybe blame would do the trick. And either way, he knew just the person who could help him set the trap.

* * *

"Back again so soon?" said Gushoushin the Elder when Imai darkened his library tables for the second time that day. Then he saw Kazuma, and grumbled. "Oh. What do you want, beast-woman?"

Kazuma snorted and put her hands on her hips. "I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that, Teddy Ruxpin. I wanted to thank you for helping my new partner out earlier today."

"And, let me guess: You have another favor to ask of us."

"Bingo, bird-man."

"Well, out with it. What can we do this time?" He spread the sarcasm on thick when he muttered, "We live to serve, after all."

The tension between them wasn't lost on Imai. "Uh, it's me," he said with a sheepishly raised hand. "Something might be going on with me since I died, and Kazuma-sempai said you might be able to tell me what it is. Or why it is."

Damn, Gushoushin thought, how did these shinigami always seem to get him involved in something he knew better than to get involved in? "Fine. What's going on?"

Haltingly—which was frustrating when there was a whole cart of books to re-shelve just waiting—Imai explained what he had been experiencing lately; which, as far as Gushoushin could tell, amounted to a sense of deja vu. Only, not deja vu. "So, you're having premonitions," he butted in, just to get to the punchline a little sooner.

Imai blinked. "Well . . . yeah. I guess you could call it that. Look, I don't believe a person _can_ tell the future, but I also don't know how else to put it. I prided myself on being quick to put the pieces together when I was on the force, but I wouldn't say that I was ever able to see what was coming ahead of time. If I had been, it would have been useful."

"And maybe you wouldn't have died."

Kazuma shot him a chastising look, but Gushoushin actually hadn't meant that one to be insulting. Just stating the facts.

"Pretty much," said Imai. At least he understood the spirit in which it had been meant.

"So it must have happened to him when he became a shinigami," said Kazuma. "Right?"

"Well, that is why you came to me, isn't it?" Gushoushin only wished his brother had been the one to answer their call. He was usually much more enthusiastic about solving these kinds of riddles. "If you're asking me if a shinigami's powers can materialize after death, then the answer is yes. Actually, the theory is that they occur during the death itself, and usually in some manner conferred on the soul by the nature of a person's death. For example, telekinetics are usually victims of car crashes or other impact accidents, shadow-users tend to die in fires—"

"So, what? Shinigami who can see the future were people who died in explosions?"

Gushoushin hummed in thought. No, that didn't sound right either. But he wouldn't know for certain without knowing the exact details of Imai's death.

"I'm going to have to look into that," he told them, making a mental note to do some digging in the records once his chores were done. "I'll get back to you once I learn more."

Kazuma and Imai just stood there with expectant looks on their faces. _Humans. Can't they take a hint?_

"Well, not right now!" he squawked, shooing them towards the door. "I have a life outside of satisfying your every whim, you know. Come back later! Better yet, when I get an answer, _I'll_ call _you._ "

* * *

"Really, Kurosaki?" Nonomiya sighed. "I'm in no mood for this. . . ." Her usually unflappable smile was gone, replaced by a look of exhaustion that almost made him wonder if she'd been crying.

But Hisoka couldn't let that distract him. Not right now. "I understand this might not be the best time," he said, "but I don't think there is such a thing as a good time for this. You're the only one who can help me. And, to be honest, you wouldn't just be doing Summons a favor. I believe you'd be helping yourself and Kazuma, too."

The mention of her partner still in Peacekeeping did give Nonomiya pause. For the briefest of moments, Hisoka worried it might be a pause for the worse, the pause before she gave him her final, adamant refusal.

But then the tiredness changed to . . . something else. Resignation maybe, or perhaps a bit of hope. "As long as it doesn't come back to bite us. It's a risk, Kurosaki. If your plan backfires—"

"If I miss my target, and any of this gets back to your boss, _I'm_ the one who's going to look like the bad guy, not you. Please," he said. "If it doesn't work this time I swear I won't try to rope you into it again."

Nonomiya shrugged. But it was her unspoken acquiescence that Hisoka took for an affirmative.

Besides, he needed her to sound genuine. So if she was taken aback when he flew out of the conference room, making the door slam back against its outer wall, it worked in his plan's favor.

"Where are they?" he shouted back at her as he stormed into the middle of the Summons office's collection of desks. "I know you were sent here to spy on us, Nonomiya. You can't deny it anymore, I _will_ find where you hid the devices!"

He started fumbling around the desk belonging to the agents working northern Honshu, pretending to look for any type of recording devices or charms. The two agents leaped back out the way, judging it wise to give a pissed-off Kurosaki on a mission a wide berth.

But it was the energy attached to their belongings that really interested Hisoka. As he felt around the underside of the desk and the bottoms of drawers, he was looking for any sign of guilt that might betray them. So far, however, other than a fleeting fear of being caught not sharing a box of high-end chocolates with the rest of the office, he felt nothing.

Meanwhile, Nonomiya watched with arms crossed and an impatient expression on her face. "I told you a million times: I don't know what devices you're talking about. I am merely here to make sure none of you do anything illegal to threaten the security of Enma-cho. You're not going to try to tell me you've never done anything like that since you've been here, are you?"

Hisoka had to hand it to her, her acting was convincing. If only because he knew she wasn't acting. "Or how about the fact that you've done nothing but suspect my motives since the day I walked in here?" she said when he moved on to Terazuma and Wakaba's desk—the one he dreaded searching the most. "This is nothing but a witch hunt, and it's unprofessional and unbecoming. I've done absolutely nothing to warrant this kind of treatment—"

"Nothing?" Having (thankfully) found no impression of guilt on the surface of Terazuma's desk—at least, nothing to remotely connect him to Peacekeeping—Hisoka stood and faced Nonomiya fully. It felt like all his rage about her being here was surging back to the surface; and even though he knew consciously that she didn't deserve it, wasn't even the real target of it, and that she no more wanted to be here than he did and hated her orders, there was a guilty kind of release in finally being able to get the frustration he had supressed for a month off his chest. "Care to explain to me how your buddies knew where to find me so fast?"

"I didn't plant anything," said Nonomiya.

"I'm not normally the one who has to say this, kid," Terazuma started, "but I'm thinking you need to calm the fuck down." And he reached for Hisoka's elbow.

Hisoka shrugged him off. A part of him was relieved that he received no sign from Terazuma—or Wakaba, who was watching from her own seat, stunned by the whole outburst—that he was the mole Hisoka was looking for. Another part ought to have been embarassed that his outburst had won him the entire office's attention, as no one was doing anything other than watching him, wondering if he'd finally gone off his rocker. Only Tatsumi knew what his game truly was, and he watched the rest of the room watching Hisoka, waiting for someone to react and give themselves away.

But Hisoka noticed none of that. Only now did that fateful night a month ago came back to him in a way that he hadn't had time to fully process since. The question that had been gnawing at the back of his mind for so long zoomed to the forefront, and he would not be quiet about it until he was satisfied.

"Then explain to me how Peacekeeping knew exactly where Chief Konoe and I were just moments after we got there!" he shouted back at Nonomiya. "Someone in this department relayed that information, and if it couldn't possibly have been you, as you keep insisting it wasn't, I want to know who it was!"

Because, thanks to that person, Hisoka was certain he had lost Tsuzuki forever. And now that that fact hit him with all the weight and meaning he had been avoiding for so long, he despised himself.

He hated that he had been so weak that he couldn't save Tsuzuki, that he had messed up everything so badly when he had tried. He hated that he hadn't been smarter, more tactful, about the way he'd approached his supposed rescue attempt. There must have been a thousand other ways he could have tried to reach Tsuzuki, ways which hadn't ended in his partner winding up with Muraki and even further out of his reach, ways which hadn't blown up a city block and killed innocent people asleep in their homes. . . .

"Alright! It was me!"

The office went silent as all eyes turned disbelieving to the one who had spoken.

Saya looked up sheepishly at them, before, lip trembling, she lowered her gaze to her lap. "It was me all along. Okay? Can we just please stop yelling at each other?" Perhaps Hisoka's own emotions had affected her, resonated with her own guilt, for she looked as crushed as Hisoka had felt just a moment ago when she sobbed, "I'm the spy."

Under Yuma's scandalized " _Saya_?!" her partner cringed. Yet when Terazuma muttered something about it always being the quiet ones, Yuma shot him a glare like daggers.

"I felt like I didn't have a choice!" Eyes brimming with tears, Saya looked to Tatsumi for understanding. "They threatened me."

"Agrippina and Keijou?" Nonomiya asked.

To which Saya nodded adamantly. It took her another moment to steady her voice. "They cornered me, said they knew I had family that was still living, and I should think long and hard about their fates if I didn't do what they asked. So when Natsume came running in here and told Tatsumi where you had gone, Hisoka, I passed it along. I knew if I didn't, and they heard about it afterwards, they would do something to make me regret it."

Apparently Hisoka wasn't the only one who was glad the two Peacekeepers were destroyed, either. Yuma for one was outraged for her partner's sake, and Terazuma and Tatsumi on principle. But it was Nonomiya's anger that Hisoka could feel strongest of all. "They should have known better," she said through her teeth. "It's grounds for termination to intentionally take a life not scheduled for death. Even threatening to do so could have ended their careers. If you had reported them—"

"Never mind that," said Terazuma. "You should have known better than to believe they'd follow up on their threats."

Wakaba made a noise that warned him he wasn't helping. But Saya shook her head. "They weren't threatening to kill my family. Agrippina said she had an in with someone in Judgment who could fix their karmic records, so that when they did . . . d-die they would receive harsher punishments. It was my family's afterlives they were going to ruin if I didn't turn spy for them.

"Don't you guys understand?" she wailed, looking between them for support before landing on Hisoka. "I couldn't risk _not_ doing it! I had to do what they said just to make sure nothing bad happened to my family! I would never forgive myself if they had to suffer in their afterlife because of me. And who could I have reported Agrippina and Keijou to? Todoroki probably ordered them to do it." (Nonomiya's sideways glance told Hisoka there was probably some truth to that.) "Chief Konoe wasn't here, and Tatsumi—" She blushed. "I-I'm really sorry, Tatsumi, but you can be kind of scary sometimes."

"I suppose I deserve that," Tatsumi said with a small, apologetic smile.

Yuma said, "Did they really have someone in Judgment who could do that to her family?"

"It's possible they had contacts," Nonomiya said gently, not wanting to frighten Saya any more but believing she deserved the truth. "Judgment officials aren't supposed to take bribes or interfere in the judgment of souls, but I would be surprised if it never happened. I can promise you, though, that I will look into the matter personally. Peacekeepers are supposed to make sure everything happens according to law around here. It's humiliating to our department to think that two of our agents could be so crooked."

"At least Agrippina and Keijou are gone," Wakaba said. "So Saya doesn't have to worry about her family anymore. Right?"

Saya hung her head in shame. "I thought that would be the end of it," she admitted in a small voice. "I was even glad when I heard they were dead, really dead. But then that guy from the other day, Endo . . . He just showed up while Yuma and I were investigating our case, in Sapporo—"

"You didn't tell me this!" said Yuma, the fear for her partner's safety shining clear in her eyes.

"You were watching our target while I got snacks," Saya told her. "Endo waited until we were separated. He said the deal I had with his associates still applied. I was so frightened, I didn't know how to tell you."

"Never mind that. God, Saya—what kind of partner am I if I can't even tell when you're being harassed!"

"I'll handle Endo myself," Tatsumi volunteered, though Nonomiya shook her head at the idea. "You'll only make things worse," she said. "You're already at the top of Todoroki's hit list, Tatsumi. I should be the one—I should have learned long ago to stand up to him—"

"No. _I'll_ talk to Todoroki myself."

Everyone had been too focused on Saya and the topic at hand to notice Konoe had returned. "This is my fault," he said, the emotion uncharacteristically thick in his voice. "I left my agents vulnerable when I left this department."

Choruses of "It wasn't your fault" and "You didn't know" broke out and then quickly trailed off. It was clear at moments like this how deeply all of Summons respected him, and Hisoka knew as well as anybody that Konoe had not left his department freely. He noticed Tatsumi look away when no one else did. Doubtless he blamed himself for letting Saya fall under Peacekeeping's malicious interests, for not being a strong enough chief to their division, and Hisoka knew that nothing he said would take away that guilt.

All of a sudden, he just wanted to sneak out of the office, disappear. His plan to flush out their mole had worked, but at what cost? Tormenting Saya even more than she was already being tormented, and in front of everyone who respected her? Even for what she had done, she didn't deserve this. Hisoka had believed he could hate the person who would betray their own department, and feel justified doing it; but seeing that Saya had been motivated by fear rather than malice, and most he could rouse was pity. Regret. He couldn't blame her for his own failures with Tsuzuki. And he had no idea how he could even begin to make amends for outing her like this.

Meanwhile, Konoe held up a hand to stop their protests. "Ms. Torii, I hope you can forgive me. I failed you when you needed me most."

Saya looked as though she were about to tell him he did no such thing, but settled for a grateful and somber nod.

"And as for everyone else," the chief said, "this department can only succeed insofar as we all trust each other. Communication must be kept open, and I want no more secrets to come between us. An attack on one of us is an attack on our entire team. Not to mention, an impediment to our work that we cannot afford. From now on, if someone from another department is threatening you, do not hesitate to report it to me. It's what King Enma himself would want."

* * *

"Sir." Tatsumi swung the door closed behind him perhaps a little too hard as he followed Konoe into his office. "I cannot let you take the blame for what happened to Ms. Torii. It was under my watch that she was compromised."

How could he have been so blind? Yet, Tatsumi knew the answer to that question. He had been so focused on finding Tsuzuki that he had neglected Summons's other duties. He had put so much trust into a vetted few that he had neglected everyone outside that circle. And they were no less Summons officers than he was. It wasn't the first time he had dropped this particular proverbial ball either. "I should have seen the signs. I was placed in charge of these people—I should have noticed that one of my team was under such stress—"

"You all were," Konoe said as he sat back behind his desk.

"That's no excuse. The point is, it was _my_ incompetence that allowed Ms. Torii to be blackmailed for so long. If anyone is to reprimanded for this, I ought to be the one. Clearly we need you to hold this department together, Chief, because I doubt there is anyone else able to do it."

Konoe leaned over his elbows. "And I am telling you, Tatsumi," he said, looking straight into his secretary's eyes, "that I don't intend to let this tarnish my reputation, or yours, or anyone at Summons, so you can stop trying to fall on your sword. Besides, it's disturbing. You take the fall far too easily for someone so quick to seek justice for the smallest infraction."

That, Tatsumi couldn't deny, brought a little color to his cheeks.

"No," Konoe went on, "I place the responsibility for this solely on the Peacekeepers involved, and as two of them are now dead for a second time, I'd say they have already been punished. As for Mr. Endo's involvement, I have no doubt that he is working with Todoroki's consent, perhaps even encouragement, and that cannot be allowed to stand. As chiefs of our respective departments, the conduct of our agents ultimately rests with Todoroki and myself. And in case he has forgotten that, and refuses to see sense, I will take the matter to the administrators in Judgment—"

"I already tried that, sir. They sided with Todoroki, citing finding Tsuzuki as a matter of 'national security' that made interdepartmental spying necessary."

"I will take it to King Enma himself, then, if I have to. His Augustness understands better than anyone that now is the worst time to have departments at each other's throats, undermining the peace this realm keeps. He will make sure a swift end is put to any corruption."

Tatsumi was tempted to say that he wasn't entirely sure the corruption and strife were not precisely what Enma wanted, though he had no proof to back up his suspicions. But it was at that time that Konoe winced and arched his back.

Tatsumi automatically took a step forward, but Konoe waved off his concern with one hand, while he tried to rub a sore spot with the other. "Just this old back, nothing to worry about. Seems to be acting up more than usual with all this running back and forth I've been doing, after six months of sitting around on my ass."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Tatsumi offered, even if he already knew there wasn't.

In answer, Konoe gestured for him to sit down.

"What I'm about to tell you must not leave this room. Is that understood? Watari already knows, but I don't want you discussing it with him. There's no telling where Todoroki might have ears—or anyone else, for that matter—and I can't risk this information getting out."

They were beyond the need for spoken vows and promises. Tatsumi took a seat in the chair across from him, and that was all the assurance that Konoe needed.

"As you know," the chief said, "we had Watari testing blood samples from our connected cases, trying to find a substance they might have been given in common. The results were getting us nowhere, so he tried testing DNA instead. I think you can probably guess what he found."

"Tsuzuki's DNA," Tatsumi said, to himself as much as the chief.

And Konoe's nod told him he was not wrong. "In their white blood cells."

"So, our suspicion that the cases had some connection to Muraki Yukitaka's experiments was not wholly unfounded. I can understand why you wouldn't want these results to become a matter of public knowledge."

He could guess what Todoroki might do with the information. It had been difficult enough when Tsuzuki had been merely unaccounted for, but if the rest of the Judgment Bureau knew his blood had been used to revitalize the living during the same period? And now, with Tsuzuki in Muraki's clutches, quite possibly staying with Muraki of his own volition? What would follow would be a personal crusade against Tsuzuki to make everything that came before seem like a harmless game. "But surely half of Summons already suspected as much. Having confirmation of our theory may be disturbing, to say the least, but the theory isn't exactly new."

"The DNA was a match to Tsuzuki," Konoe said in a low voice, as if it took an effort to drag each word from his own throat, "but it wasn't an exact match. Watari said it was familial."

"How much?" But Tatsumi already knew it was too much to hope for the match to indicate some niece or nephew or distant cousin.

"Fifty percent. That's right." Tatsumi's reaction must have been clear on his face, because Konoe made no mistake of it. "If the results are accurate, and Watari assures me they are, it would appear that somewhere out there, Tsuzuki has a child running around."

 _And I know who it is._

 _Damn it, Tsuzuki, why did you have to choose me to be the keeper of your secrets?_ Tsuzuki had begged him not to tell. But it had been Hisoka he was so terrified of learning the truth. Kurosaki, Konoe—which did it matter? The moment Tatsumi revealed to anyone how Muraki was truly connected to Tsuzuki was the moment he lost control of that information. God, if he could only erase it from his own mind so that no one else, not even he, would have to know the awful truth. . . .

"Is there something you want to tell me?"

Tatsumi shook himself out of his own thoughts to see Konoe scrutinizing him with that suspicious look. He must have paled, or gotten that distant look in his eyes that was a sure tell as to the direction of his thoughts.

"Yes, in fact. There is." Konoe knew him too well to be persuaded with a word that all was well with Tatsumi, particularly when it wasn't. Tatsumi had to give him something. "While we are being open and honest with each other, there is something that I think it's time you knew."

Mentally, he cursed Tsuzuki a thousand times for this. _Let the fallout be on your head. God knows it's a weakness of mine, but I do this all for you._

"When Watari and I brought Kurosaki back with us from Sakuraiji's residence, we noticed something . . . odd."

"How odd?"

"As you know, he was very badly burned. At first we thought it was just an effect of his injuries. But upon closer examination, we were forced to concede that our eyes were not playing tricks with us. There were scales beneath the worst of Kurosaki's burns, Chief. Snake scales."

Konoe sat back, stunned to silence by the revelation. He had seen Tatsumi's file on the Kurosaki family's case, Tatsumi was certain of that, and Watari's. Konoe knew just as well as they did what had gone on in that ancient house in Kamakura, and what new and grotesque forms the Yatonokami's curse had taken.

But this, though not inconceivable by any means, had been unexpected. Though perhaps, judging by his reaction, not as unexpected to Konoe as it had been to the other two upon seeing it. His "You're certain?" had a definite ring of resignation to it. Konoe had been fearing this.

"Yes. They were unmistakable. His eyes had changed as well. That had been one of the more obvious outward signs of the elder Kurosaki's possession when we investigated him in his home. We could not forget it if we tried." The whites turned to gray, almost black, the pupils serpentine slits, the original human irises taking on a reptilian cast. . . . "Kurosaki's eyes were just the same as his father's."

Konoe nodded to himself as he let the meaning of this new information slowly sank in. It would take a while to digest, Tatsumi knew. He was still trying to accept what it might mean himself. For Kurosaki, but also for the rest of them. None of Summons was an island, after all. They all needed each other. But could he depend on associates whom he was no longer sure were not demons in disguise, wild like predatory animals and liable to turn on him at any moment?

"I think it's best," Konoe finally said, "if this stays between us as well, Tatsumi. If Kurosaki doesn't know what you saw, we should keep it that way. Enma believes he may be our only chance of saving Tsuzuki. But I'm afraid that if Kurosaki learns what he really is, it might destroy him first."

On that, Tatsumi told him, he was inclined to agree.


	13. First lesson

When Tsuzuki found the room he and Muraki had shared tea in rearranged, he knew something was up and that he wasn't going to like it. The furniture had all been moved against the walls, or else removed to another room entirely. Anything valuable or breakable was gone. Including, Tsuzuki noticed, the Persian rug that had graced the floor, replaced by a much plainer, rough-woven one.

Tsuzuki almost turned and walked back out of the room when he saw Muraki waiting for him there, in shirtsleeves, sans tie, unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves so he could roll them up.

"No," Tsuzuki said. "I told you no."

Muraki just shrugged. "Humor me. I should have made the connection long ago, but it took strapping you to a cot for me to realize it. You never properly learned to defend yourself, did you?"

"Of course I know how to defend myself."

At least, that was what Tsuzuki started to say before he felt the side of Muraki's arm connect with his jaw. Stunned and whiplashed, he didn't have time to resist when Muraki grabbed his arm, and threw Tsuzuki over his shoulder.

He hit the floor hard, the breath knocked out of him. And when his vision cleared of red spots, Muraki was kneeling over him, without any of the malice their previous session might have led him to expect.

"I'm surprised. I would have thought hand-to-hand combat to be one of the first things they teach you as a shinigami."

Muraki got back to his feet, and extended Tsuzuki his hand.

But if he thought Tsuzuki was going to take it, he was mad. "I learned how to use fuda to defend myself, and I worked hard to win twelve loyal shikigami. I know enough to suit my needs." Tsuzuki groaned as he pushed himself into a sitting position. The bruises would heal soon enough, but that knock to the jaw still smarted. Though Tsuzuki supposed he deserved that after their last exchange of blows. "We don't typically need to use hand-to-hand combat in our line of work."

"Nonsense. That's a skill anyone in any line of work can benefit from."

"Except, see, you can't punch a demon back to Hell, or full nelson a stubborn soul on to Meifu. You're welcome to try, though—er, the punching a demon thing, I mean. I really don't want you trying to do my job for me. You've screwed that up enough as it is."

Muraki chuckled at that, but Tsuzuki hadn't meant it as a joke and bristled. (And really, he should have known better than to be so glib about human lives around Muraki.) "I see your point. However, one cannot always rely on some powerful guardian god swooping in to the rescue, either, can they? A lot of good your twelve, loyal shikigami have done you here."

"Give me a bow and arrow, then. I'll show you how good a shot I am."

"I'm sure you will. Right between the eyes. Eh, Tsuzuki?" Muraki shook his head. "What do you take me for?"

That hand still hovered in the space between them, inviting him to take it. Tsuzuki glared up at it, and then Muraki; and the doctor must have finally taken the hint. He let it fall back to his side.

"The whole point of hand-to-hand combat is that you have some means of defending yourself when you have no other weapon at your disposal. Nor do you need one, if you know what you're doing. You _are_ the weapon." At the start of Tsuzuki's protest, Muraki raised a hand, begging understanding. "I don't mean how you think I mean it. Any man, or woman, possessed of their limbs and wits and a basic grasp of the laws of physics and anatomy, already has at their disposal the means to defend themselves from most forms of attack. Of course one's fists are no match for an ancient god, full of fire and brimstone. But—"

No sooner had Tsuzuki got back on his feet than Muraki was on him again, seizing him around the throat and pulling Tsuzuki back against himself. This was where Tsuzuki was supposed to break free, fight back, but old habits died hard. Pressed up against this man he knew wanted to do unspeakable things with him, he froze.

"If you know how to disable the one controlling the god, on the other hand," Muraki muttered in his ear, "your chances of surviving increase dramatically. You start with a familiarity with your enemy's vulnerable points. Throat," he said, giving it a gentle, demonstrative tug with his arm before releasing Tsuzuki from its grip. "Underarms—"

The fingertips abruptly jabbed into that sensitive area made Tsuzuki jump, and curse himself for it.

"—abdomen, underneath the rib cage, where the vital organs are easily accessed. And the groin."

Tsuzuki sucked in a breath at the press of Muraki's leg between his, the hint of it against the hollow of his backside. There was nothing violent in the action itself, Muraki's point being merely to educate, to elucidate; but the suggestion of intimacy in such a casually delivered gesture was shocking. Tsuzuki felt his cheeks color, abashed by his own reaction, as Muraki moved on.

"Never underestimate that one," he said, smiling to himself as he slowly circled Tsuzuki to face him again. "It may seem like a low blow, but everything is fair when you are fighting for your life. Or, I suppose, in your case, someone else's. The hands and feet are remarkably sensitive as well, as the Romans understood all too well, and amazingly simple to disable. Why don't you strike me, Tsuzuki."

He didn't spend much time thinking about it. Something primal in Tsuzuki took over at that command, something that he been waiting for a reason or an invitation for some time. He took one glance at those cold, calculating eyes and wanted to smash the man's glasses into them.

But Muraki caught his wrist before he could land his blow, and with a jerk of his hand, his fingertips twisted like screws into nerves Tsuzuki didn't even know he had. He cried out, surprised by the pain, before he could catch himself, and tears sprang unwanted to his eyes.

"See what I mean?" Muraki said dispassionately.

When he released him, Tsuzuki massaged the pain out of his hand and swore. Point taken. Now their past encounters took on a new light. In Nagasaki, and again at sea, he had thought Muraki a coward for going after his vulnerabilities rather than facing him head-on. It wasn't really cowardice, though, was it, when one played to win? Scruples, while noble and just, were just dead weight if they kept you from reaching your goal.

And maybe that was it, what was bugging Tsuzuki so much about all of this. "Isn't this just a waste of your time? I know this stuff already."

"Oh, I know you know how to fight. When you're properly motivated."

"You just want me to do it on command."

"That is correct."

"Even though I'm just going to take what I learn and use it against you?"

Muraki grinned at that, as if at some private joke. He removed his glasses, and placed them on the mantel out of harm's way. "Believe me," he said, "I am aware of that possibility—"

"More like eventuality," Tsuzuki said.

"You certainly have the right to try and kill me for what I've done, I will not deny it. And, as I have said in the past, if I have to die at anyone's hand, I would prefer it be yours. I believe, however, that you have greater enemies than myself that demand your attention—enemies we share in common."

"You're talking about Enma." And if he expected Tsuzuki to turn against his old friends, no matter what had become of them in his absence . . .

Muraki, however, gave him a sideways look at that name. "I'm glad if this means you are finally entertaining the possibility that there are factions of your world who want to use what you have to their own advantage. Or have you eliminated. With those shikigami at your disposal, you pose a formidable threat."

It was a powerful image, as well, the thought that popped into Tsuzuki's mind as though planted there by the doctor. Of the Judgment Bureau's dome crumbling under Suzaku's wings and Byakko's crushing talons, the cherry trees made fiery torches by Touda's breath. The rush of such immense power flowing into and through him from all directions, knowing it was his to command. That vengeance could be had with the point of his finger—

No—it was a horrific thought, and it felt like tempting fate even entertaining it. What Sargatanas had made Tsuzuki feel when the devil was in control of his body was abominable, a gross perversion of himself. He loathed himself even now for being too weak to do anything but ride along. But it was true what Muraki said. For that business with Sargatanas, and many other incidents in his decades of service, Tsuzuki knew he was hated in Meifu. Feared. Condemned. That some people there really did think the world would be better off if he ceased to exist.

"But I was actually referring to Hell," Muraki said, as if reading Tsuzuki's thoughts.

And Tsuzuki remembered that night at Ukyou's house, being unable to move or utter a word in his agony—unable to do a single thing as Mitani's white and ruined face peered down at him, in triumph. I let you die, had been Tsuzuki's first guilt-ridden thought, forgive me, I failed you. But then he recognized the devil beneath the leer. Focalor had stared at him the same way, from inside Izuru's corpse. _What do you think of me now, shinigami? Not as destroyed as you believed me to be?_

Still: "I don't know what Hell would still want with me, seeing as I want nothing to do with them. I've made that abundantly clear. Or what good kung fu or whatever you plan to teach me is going to do against demons."

"They still have Ukyou," Muraki said through gritted teeth, "and, lest you forget, your child. Whom they will undoubtedly raise to take your place in your absence. Do you plan to sit back and do nothing, let them have their way with your own flesh and blood?"

"I don't see what I can do. Not from here."

But even as he said it, Tsuzuki felt as though perhaps he understood. He had shed tears over the professor's body, had felt the anger boiling righteous within him over all the lives Focalor and Sargatanas had taken, whether innocent or not. And he could not deny the appeal of the prospect of revenge.

Was that Muraki's purpose in invoking them? To give him a purpose, a target on which to focus his energies? A target other than Muraki himself?

Or perhaps a bit of hope, to think maybe—well, Hisoka may have been a lost cause, but there was still someone out there he could save?

"But why not. Seeing as I'm stuck here until you decide otherwise, it's not as though I have anything better to do. Your library is a snooze-fest, by the way." And if anything good came out of this exercise, maybe he would learn something about Muraki's vulnerabilities as well. Tsuzuki could take a page from that man's book, about the virtues of patience and lying in wait for the perfect moment, when his enemy's weaknesses exposed themselves.

After perhaps an hour or so of "instruction," however—and Muraki ran a trial by fire, expecting Tsuzuki to pick up the proper technique as he went along, seemingly by osmosis—Tsuzuki felt no more learned in hand-to-hand combat than he had been before. Though he was a hell of a lot sorer for it.

"You're allowing your passions to run away with you," Muraki corrected him, after he caught Tsuzuki off his guard and tripped him for the umpteenth time that day. "You think they give you strength, but they really only make you impatient, sloppy—"

"You want me to fight you in cold blood."

"Yes! Precisely that! Every time we met in the past, when you attacked me it was only after your anger had gotten the better of you."

"And I always won," Tsuzuki said, wiping the sweat from his chin. "Ipso facto, anger works."

Though, if he stopped to think about it, that was an overstatement. Just because he had somehow made it out of all those encounters intact didn't mean he had achieved a victory, or even earned one. Could he say it counted if it had been putting his and Hisoka's heads together that had saved them, or if Tatsumi had been the one to step in before all was lost? Or if he only found the anger necessary to go on the offensive _after_ people he might have been able to save had been hurt? Muraki knew it, too.

"The _one_ time you nearly had me," he said, "I had been too consumed by my own passions to see you coming. My lust for revenge was nearly my downfall. While you, calm and collected, knew exactly what you were doing, putting that blade in my gut."

His fingers went to the spot, as if he could still feel some trace of the stabbing at the memory.

Tsuzuki, however, had only the faintest recollection of it. "I don't remember." In a way, he would have liked to. It would have been a boost to his confidence, at very least, to recall a time when he _had_ succeeded in wounding that man gravely.

"You may have been in a fugue state at the time. I put you through some incredible pain shortly before, so I would not be surprised if your conscious mind had gone . . . somewhere else. It's a perfectly normal, perfectly human defensive strategy, to disconnect mentally from the source of pain and distress."

What little Tsuzuki remembered of that final night in Kyoto seemed mostly like a dream. Though he knew consciously that he had summoned Touda and ordered the fire in that university lab, he wasn't aware of doing any of it until Hisoka had startled him back to himself. Likewise, he knew vaguely what Muraki had done to him in the hours before, but it was like it had all happened to someone else. Someone else whose regenerative powers Muraki had tested, someone else whose throat had been slit down to the bone.

But if his mind had gone away somewhere else, where had it gone? It felt as though there was a room in Tsuzuki's mind whose door was closed but not locked, for his terror to enter ensured it stayed that way better than any deadbolt or chain.

Of all the questions he had from that night, one weighed most heavily on his mind. "How _did_ you survive?"

Muraki grinned. "You still need to ask, knowing that you survived your own repeated attempts at suicide—knowing I share your blood?" He shrugged. "The wound should have been fatal, it's true, from loss of blood alone. But it healed."

"I'm not talking about that. I mean the fire. It should have destroyed everything in that place." Tsuzuki narrowed his eyes at him. "I know how I got out of it."

Tatsumi had confessed his intervention sometime after. How he had wanted to let Tsuzuki have his way and end his pain, but had been unwilling to sacrifice Hisoka to the flames as well—at least, that had been his excuse for rescuing them both. He hadn't wanted to speak of it, the trauma of his own death instilling a fear of fire in him that he was loth to even discuss; or maybe it was the generous side of him that others only rarely were allowed to see, yet somehow Tsuzuki was privileged to time and time again. The side that wanted everyone to forget any good deed that Tatsumi ever did them.

That didn't explain how Muraki had survived Touda's fire, though. "How did _you_ get out?"

For once, it seemed he had hit upon a subject that Muraki didn't want to discuss. Those cold eyes shifted, as though paging through possible answers, but none was forthcoming.

"You had help, too. Didn't you?" It was the only reason Tsuzuki could see for his silence. Muraki had someone of his own to protect. "An ally? Not that friend from the brothel, I bet. No _human_ would have gotten through that fire intact. So who? A demon?" A darker thought occurred, but it gave Tsuzuki some relish to voice it, to entertain the thought that it could be someone he already knew who deserved his wrath: "Someone from Meifu?"

"I think that's enough for today." Muraki began rolling down his sleeves, then retrieved his glasses from the mantel.

Did that mean Tsuzuki was on to something? "Wait." If he was that close, he couldn't let it end there. "There is someone, isn't there? Someone on the inside helping you? We suspected as much when you brought Fujisawa back to life." Tsuzuki had seen the body himself when it was pulled out of the bay at Nagasaki. No one could have come back from injuries of that boy's sort without _some_ sort of divine intervention.

Muraki paused in wiping his glasses. "You don't think I could have brought him back myself?"

"I wouldn't put anything past you where medical experiments are concerned. But we should have been alerted when you took back his soul—"

"I thought you wouldn't put anything past me."

He shot Tsuzuki his most disarming smile, the kind that probably fooled everyone else into thinking Muraki was anything but a psychotic killer. But Tsuzuki knew better. Muraki was refusing to answer because it suited his purposes to remain mysterious.

 _He_ wants _me to suspect there's someone in the Judgment Bureau in his pocket—maybe even someone I worked close to. This is what he's always tried to do: sow doubt, distrust. Give the illusion that we've been destined for each other all along, that no one else understands me but him. That's the only reason he doesn't insist on taking all the credit himself. He wants me to think I can't trust anyone but him—which is precisely why I can't trust him at all._

But even telling himself so, Tsuzuki had to wonder if there wasn't an ounce of truth to it. It was too convenient, how Muraki was able to play fast and loose with the laws of life and death—and kept getting away with it, too. Was he really that good—had his grandfather really provided him such a sturdy foundation from which to bring back the dead, Frankenstein-style? Or had someone been helping him out with the big stuff the whole time?

"I'm going to find out," Tsuzuki swore. When Muraki scoffed as though to say, From here?, Tsuzuki shot back: "Or my coworkers will. This isn't the sort of thing they can just write off, let go. Whoever you're working with, they'll figure it out and put an end to whatever benefits you're getting."

"Oh, I have no doubt they will. That secretary fellow of yours seemed to have a particularly strong dislike of me. I'm sure he will be especially zealous about exposing all my secrets. But it won't do them any good. I'm afraid I may have already called in my last favor."

It was Tsuzuki's turn to force a laugh. "Let me guess. Me."

"Not everything is about you, Tsuzuki." But it wasn't a denial either.

"No, not everything." Tsuzuki allowed him that. "But this is. Isn't it? It's about you _and_ me. At least . . ."

He took a step toward Muraki. Looked up at him through his lashes in that way that always made Tatsumi, for all his policies and principles, capitulate to whatever Tsuzuki's excuse or plea was at the moment. "That's what you keep telling me. That's what you've gone through all this trouble to make me understand: that it's been about us from the beginning."

There. Let him try and deny it.

But, of course, Muraki couldn't. And he wouldn't. He stared at Tsuzuki for a few seconds, tight-lipped, and if Tsuzuki could claim any victory, perhaps it was this one. That he had finally said something to put Muraki at a loss for words.

But in his mind, a warning sounded. He couldn't take this too far. Back home, it might have been only a game. He might have used this tactic on his coworkers or a case to get what he wanted, but that didn't mean Muraki would take it the same way. Knowing him, he would take it as an invitation. Or worse: a sign that he was wearing Tsuzuki down. So Tsuzuki could throw those words at him, he could stare Muraki down with all the defiance he could muster, but that was all he dared do. If Muraki reached out to touch him, Tsuzuki was sure he would recoil from it just the same as always, and all his defiance would prove a mere weak gesture.

Eventually, the spell broke. Muraki turned away with a smile.

"Allow me to tell you a story, Tsuzuki."

 _What is this, show and tell?_ But Tsuzuki only said, "Okay."

"Nine, almost ten years ago now," Muraki said, "I laid a trap in the hopes of seeing you. By that time, I had some inkling of your work and some suspicions about what you were, but—I am a man of science, after all—I had to test my theory.

"So I found myself a subject." A slight laugh. "Or is it fairer to say he found me? The opportunity that presented itself was too perfect not to take. So I made him mine, practically scrawled my own name in his body, and cursed him to remain just on the very precipice of death for the foreseeable future. In excruciating pain, at every waking moment, terrified of falling asleep—wanting so much to die, but unable to do anything but keep living. Remind you of anyone, Tsuzuki?"

 _Hisoka._ Guilt flared up strong again within Tsuzuki. It wasn't enough to rub the responsibility for Hisoka's final death in his face again and again. Muraki relished this: reminding Tsuzuki that it was all his fault from the beginning. Before he had even known Muraki, before that man's existence had been a blip on the Summons Division's radar, he was doing evil in Tsuzuki's name.

But that wasn't entirely what Muraki meant, as he stood there meeting Tsuzuki's defiant gaze with one much mightier. _You did that to him . . . for me._ Deep down, perhaps Tsuzuki had always known it. Suspected it at very least. But when the words were said aloud—when he could not run from the truth any longer, when he _had_ to confront it, it took on meaning he'd never felt before. "You were trying to . . . to _copy_ what had happened to me?"

"Of course, I must have read Grandfather's journals about you a thousand times. I wanted to see for myself what it would look like, for a soul to be trapped in a body that's turned against it—a body that will not cease to live. But, as you know, unlike yourself, the boy was human. He had to be kept in that state by artificial means."

Tsuzuki felt like he was going to be sick. He felt behind him for something with which to brace himself, but there was nothing. By now, the depths of Muraki's sickness didn't much surprise him; but it had been so much easier to think that that sickness, that perversion, had been the sole cause for Hisoka's death. _But it was my fault. It was_ always _my fault. Hisoka. . . . If I had known. . . ._

What? What could he possibly have done?

"To be frank, I didn't expect it to take three years for the boy to die," Muraki said, as though it were merely the length of time that troubled Tsuzuki so visibly. "I was certain the proper authorities would intervene before it could go that far. Perhaps, I thought, I had done something wrong, that Enma did not register the boy's soul as living dead. But I was mistaken. My little love letter _had_ reached the Judgment Bureau's attention after all. They _did_ send someone to investigate."

Just not whom Muraki had been expecting. And not anyone from Summons. Tsuzuki remembered that much for certain. Hisoka's official record had his death as a mysterious illness. How difficult would it have been to uncover the truth?

Or had Enma known the truth all along? And if he had, why had he covered it up?

"They just didn't send the _right_ someone. Or perhaps they just didn't care."

Tsuzuki's teeth hurt so hard from gnashing them. With a growl tearing out of him, he lunged. He grabbed a fistful of Muraki's shirt, aiming his other fist at Muraki's head, throwing all this strength and all his hatred for that man and for himself behind it.

He heard more than felt the lens of the glasses crack beneath his fist, and Muraki's grunt of surprise and pain was more satisfying yet. His heart fluttering with a surge of elation, a grin just tugging at the corner of his lips, Tsuzuki hit him again, and again—

Until his blow was blocked, his wrist caught in Muraki's grip, and the doctor slammed his forehead down on Tsuzuki's. Pain exploded in his skull as he heard his nose break. It seemed even the ability to breathe had been knocked out of him, and he folded in on himself.

Muraki was there to catch him, however, enfolding Tsuzuki in a farce of an embrace that did not match the ice in his words when he whispered in Tsuzuki's ear: "I'm counting on that rage, Tsuzuki. But you will never be strong enough to win until you embrace it fully. Control it, lest it control you."

Tsuzuki managed to push himself away to arm's length, even if for the moment his vision was reeling so much he still needed Muraki for support. "Bastard—"

"You'll learn to thank me. Once you've come to appreciate your true value. You'll see that everything I've put you through is for your own good."

* * *

How had he survived? It was true what Tsuzuki said, the serpent's fire should have killed him.

Yet he remembered his consciousness returning slowly. With amazed relief. He was alive. Or, at least, aware. Since such things as shinigami existed, he could not count out that his consciousness of his surroundings was not that of his deceased soul, awakening to a new level of existence.

" _. . . should have let him perish in the flames. This one will cause more trouble than he's worth."_

" _But Our Lord has plans for him. He cannot serve his purpose if he no longer exists."_

 _The voices reached him as if through a dense fog, and his damaged eyes could only make out vague shapes, impressions and outlines. Man-like shapes, but with heads of animals. A horse, or perhaps an ass, with a long snout and tall, pointed ears. The horns and ring-pierced nostrils of a bull on another. . . . Wasn't Enma reported to have servants such as these guarding his throne? "Blasted half-breed clone," said the first creature that had spoken, whose nasal voice Muraki presumed belonged to the horse-headed demon. "Such a thing should never have been given life in the first place."_

" _But he was. And he is. And it is not for you lot to question my will."_

 _The voice that spoke now was sweet—the gender, almost impossible to determine, and age even more so. It spoke with an authority that even he, in his defiant heart, felt a yearning to surrender to: the undeniable attraction of great and ancient power. He had an impression of skin black as charcoal, hair as long and fine as his mother's, a delicate hand passing like the brush of a feather over his face. Power, yes, but mercy also. So this, he thought, is what it is to be in the embrace of Death. How oddly comforting, to know there was nothing left to do. How wonderfully heavy he felt, like after a particularly satisfying night of love-making, to know that very soon he would no longer have to fight._

 _Just a little longer, and the fog would pass from his eyes, allowing him to look upon the face of he whom Muraki had defied for so long, he whose tyranny Muraki would oppose until his—undoubtedly close-at-hand—last breath: the Great King Enma, Lord of the Dead._

 _But when his vision cleared, it was a different face he found looking down into his own, like the Virgin in a piet_ _à_ _—a face he was already familiar with. And why should it still surprise him, that demons could imitate the angels better than anything else was able?_

" _My dear, dear Kazutaka," the sickly-sweet voice of Ashtaroth said, "surely you did not think I would allow you to slither out of our deal as easily as that? Not when I still have such use for you."_

"Sir?"

Muraki looked up from his thoughts to see Sakaki standing in the kitchen doorway. The concern was clear from the man's tone. And Muraki was well aware how he looked, with a damp cloth held over one side of his face, his shirt front still spattered with blood from Tsuzuki's broken nose.

"It isn't mine," he assured his man of the latter.

"And I suppose _that_ isn't either?" Sakaki said when Muraki lowered the washcloth, revealing the smattering of cuts and dark bruises already forming around his left eye.

Muraki grinned, as he had as a boy. "You should see the other guy."

And Sakaki sighed, taking the washcloth off Muraki's hands and running it under fresh water. "And you still think this is a wise course of action?"

"Didn't you think it was wise when you did the same for me?"

"That was different. You weren't hell-bent on killing me."

On that point, Muraki knew better than to argue.

And he _was_ grateful to the man. Sakaki's had been the first face he saw when he returned to consciousness in his own world.

Once upon a time, he had been Muraki's father's driver as well, and his butler, valet, secretary—whatever the Muraki household's need was at the time, that man seamlessly filled it. Maids were replaceable—particularly after Shidou Saki had entered the household—but Sakaki was as much a fixture in his father's house as the unmovable boulders in its garden. Muraki never did know as a boy where Sakaki had come from, only that this stoic, impeccably dressed man had shown up sometime shortly after his grandfather's death, and never left. He had paid Sakaki's comings and goings little attention, until that fateful day, after the funeral for his parents, when all the guests had gone home. . . .

It was one of those moments a person has when he first recognizes the humanity of another individual as equal to his own—the moment when one understands that he is not the only self-sovereign soul inhabiting his world. Looking up at Sakaki through the smoke of a just-fired shotgun, Muraki saw the man through new eyes. Or, perhaps, truly, for the first time. In doing so, somehow he also saw himself as Sakaki did, as possessing of some quality worth protecting. And it was that, more than the immeasurable gratitude he owed the man, that haunted Muraki still.

Most people never saw the monster that lurked in him until it was too late. But Sakaki, it seemed, saw some goodness that even Muraki himself was hard-pressed to acknowledge.

So when he had awoken after the fire in Kyoto to find himself in his grandfather's European-styled home, Sakaki waiting patiently by his bed with an old book across his knee, Muraki did not wonder how the old man had brought him here, or feel ashamed of having his needs taken care of like he was a child again. He owed Sakaki more than he could ever begin to repay. And Sakaki would not hear a word of it. Maybe he saw his continued service as penance for failing to save Muraki's father. But, then again, perhaps that was overthinking a simple matter. Perhaps it really had been the young Kazutaka he'd been hired to watch over from the beginning.

Sakaki placed the cool cloth to Muraki's temple, garnering a small hiss. But this wasn't how Muraki wanted his servant and mentor to see him. He snatched the washcloth back, not caring if Sakaki took offense at that. Muraki was not a boy anymore. He could be trusted to decide for himself what needed to be done.

"I must at least insist that you forgo your glasses," Sakaki said, "if you insist on continuing this."

"Good night, Sakaki," was all Muraki said to that, and let that be the man's cue to release him of his care for the evening.

There was still so much more that could be said. But Sakaki clenched down on any further protest. It would do him no good anyway.

"Good night, young master."


	14. Second chance

Careful not to disturb Kannuki, who was sleeping on top of one of his arms, Terazuma reached out in the dark for his watch with the other.

 _3:20. . . ._

If he was still awake in half an hour, he might as well get up and get a start on the day. Get the coffee going, sneak out for a cigarette, or ten. But that would mean he wouldn't have gotten anything but a few fitful starts of sleep.

It was the silence that kept him up. After all this time, waiting and wishing he could be alone in his own head again, it was this silence that was slowly driving him mad. It was easier to stay sane in the daylight, and the noise and hustle-and-bustle of the day. Kannuki adequately filled the empty spaces, with conversation and other, hard-won distractions. But he couldn't ask her to stay up with him all night.

 _Do you hear me, you stupid cat? Pick up, damn you!_

But no one ever answered his call. No voice but his own ever echoed around his brain.

Terazuma put the watch back with a long, silent sigh. Just half an hour. If this deafening silence would cease long enough that he could just get half an hour's rest . . .

* * *

Terazuma wasn't the only one finding it hard to sleep these days. Though in Hisoka's case, he might have welcomed insomnia to the alternative.

He still dreamed of home. The grove of cherry trees in bloom, the night of the lunar eclipse.

Only these days Muraki was absent. The threat of him was still there, some malevolent force lurking among those trees, and the tall, overgrown grasses, but it was . . . different somehow. Still the impression of silver hair and metallic eyes, still the sense that he's witnessing something he shouldn't be. Still the overwhelming impression, that makes his heart hammer in his chest, that he's prey.

He remembers the lake. Admonitions not to go there. Some woman once drowned in it, long ago, or else it was the legendary well that a serpent god had once inhabited and poisoned. It fills him with a child's terror—nameless, proof-less, but real in a way that he knows no one else will understand, it will only make the magic of the spell disappear if he tells another soul. He saw his own grave near there once—well, really it was his sister's, who died before he was born, but it bore his name, and ever since then, whenever he was near that lake he felt like he could hear her talking to him, whispering in his ear the thoughts and feelings of everyone around them that only she could hear, so loudly she left him fit to bursting with their emotions. She tags him— _you're it_ —and goes running through the tall grasses, away from the cherry trees, lifting her bare dirty feet in her old yukata like a cat in the snow.

And he follows her. To the lake.

Or marsh, really. It's hard to tell where the water ends and the land begins. Of his sister, no trace, but he can hear the other children laughing. The kids who were sent to school with him but refused to play unless he played the monster in the middle—like they might catch some unspoken disease if they don't quarantine him in the role. They laugh at him, sing songs about him, _creepy Hisoka, got a creepy secret_ , but slowly their singing turns to fear, and their laughing turns to shrieks, melding together until all he can hear is an overwhelming high-pitched _hhissssss._

He looks down, and sees water up to his ankles. Where his reflection should be, there is nothing. The water is too dark for light to penetrate. Only the vaguest of dark shapes, switchbacking underneath the surface. There's something in that water, trying to get his attention, trying to get out.

 _He's_ under waves, breathing water, trying to get out. Screaming but no sound comes out. Beating against the surface but he _just can't break through_ —

Hisoka woke with a jolt, remembering to breathe. Air. Just air. And suddenly he was back in his room and the dream felt like just that: a dream. No real, present threats. He turned to look at the clock, saw it was almost 4:30. Early enough he could still get some rest, if his mind could calm enough to go back to sleep.

Enough of this, he told himself as he lay there, listening to his pounding heart return to its normal rhythm. He'd been putting up with these dreams and interrupted sleep long enough. As soon as the day reached a less ungodly hour, he would head over to see Watari, before going in to work.

"Something for sleep, huh?" the scientist said as he rifled through his medicine cabinet. "Tricky things, those. With our bodies, we tend to metabolize the stuff too fast for it to have the full, desired effect. I can give you something to knock you out good, but no guarantees it'll keep you that way all night."

"That's fine." Hisoka stifled a yawn. "I can always take a second one if I wake up in the middle of the night, right?"

He missed the side-eye Watari gave him behind his glasses. But Watari covered for it with a jaunty, "This oughtta do the trick," and tossed Hisoka a small bottle of pills. Which, bleary-eyed, Hisoka nearly caught in the face. "Use as directed, then as you feel like."

 _I guess it's not like I can overdose. Or, if I do, like it's going to do any lasting harm._ Hisoka glanced at the bottle, but his mind wasn't rested enough for label jargon. "It's not going to make me have even crazier dreams, is it?"

"I take it from the question that's what's keepin' you up?"

"You could say that. Well, one in particular. And for once it isn't about Muraki."

Watari took a seat across from him. "Wanna talk about it? I mean, only if you feel comfortable enough, of course, but sometimes it helps to get it off your chest, to have another set of eyes lookin' at it. Either that, or it just sounds so ridiculous when you say it out loud that your brain is too embarrassed to ever dream that dream again."

Being such a private person by nature, Hisoka's first thought was to refuse outright. Even Tsuzuki he hadn't wanted to hear his dreams, and in most ways he had trusted Tsuzuki more than anyone. _But what can it really hurt? It's a dream. It's not real. And at least it's not a sexual one._ And the idea that it might just go away on its own if he shared it was an enticing one.

So Hisoka told Watari about the overgrown field back home, and the lake, and the feeling of something lurking within it.

And something struck him in the telling. "Huh."

"Huh?" Watari echoed.

"I guess I only just remembered. . . ." It was strange. Hisoka had been dead for years; how could it only now be coming back to him? "I think . . . yeah, I'm sure I used to have this dream before. Well, something similar, anyway. It scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. But my father always said it was because of the story of Ren and the yatonokami—everyone in the village knew it. He said I must have heard it whispered among the servants too many times, and that he'd have to talk to them about filling my head with scary stories. I don't think he ever did, though. Reprimand anyone for it, I mean."

He shook himself from the memory with a slight shiver, looked up at Watari. "Is it weird that I might have repressed that?"

But Watari waved it off before he could get very far. "This sort of thing happens all the time. Recurring dreams we had in life—they go away, they come back. Sometimes some memory will come back two decades or more after your death, just outta the blue, and you wonder how you could have forgotten it. Or if it was even a real memory to begin with. Round here, you should just count it as a blessing if you're not reliving your own death night after night."

"That's the thing. I _was._ Don't get me wrong, it's a relief to be dreaming about something else for a change, but I was almost getting used to it." In a way, Hisoka almost felt guilty about that, as though he were betraying the promise of vengeance he had made to his living self by _not_ dreaming of Muraki, and all the pain that man had caused him. Hard as it was to endure, that pain did give him purpose. "At least when I was dreaming of my death I knew what to expect."

"Mm-hm. And, just out of curiosity, when did you start noticing you were having this new—or, should I say, _old_ dream?"

"I don't know. I guess it must have been after I tried to use Rikugou. While I was recovering here. After I stopped having flashbacks of being torched, that is."

"I suspected that might be the case," Watari said, but offered nothing more.

But Hisoka didn't see why the timing was so important. "It's still disturbing as hell—it's still keeping me up at night. Why did you ask? Do you think it makes a difference that I'm having them now?"

"Like I said," Watari flashed him a smile, "I was curious. That's all."

But why did Hisoka suddenly get the sense there was another reason Watari was shrugging this off? Normally he had some lengthy, sciency mumbo-jumbo explanation for this sort of thing. Instead, Watari was pointedly avoiding Hisoka's eyes. And Hisoka wasn't buying that smile for a second.

And there was something else. There was another slew of emotions that Hisoka felt from him but couldn't find the reason for: dread, revulsion, guilt. And pity. Hisoka's description of his dream certainly wasn't cause for any of that—at least, not in the amounts he was feeling. He had to ask about it. But he knew if he did ask outright, Watari would only avoid the subject more ardently.

"Well," Hisoka shrugged, "thanks for the pills, anyway. I'll see if they make any difference and get back to you." And he pushed himself back to his feet, making as if to leave.

"You do that, Bon. Hope it works for ya." Again: cheery voice, acting like everything was normal. But he wanted Hisoka gone. _I'm making him nervous. I'm getting close to . . . something. Something he doesn't want me to see. But what?_

Fortunately for Hisoka, Watari had a tendency not to push in his chairs. A rolling stool happened to be sticking out enough in his path for Hisoka to run into it without arousing too much suspicion. He hissed something about his regrown toes and doubled over, and Watari couldn't help himself. He reached out to steady Hisoka—

And suddenly Hisoka found himself staring in horror at his own burnt corpse. Or rather, not a corpse. Though it might as well have been. He could feel Watari's horror as fresh as if it were his own, and could watch his own chest rising and falling beneath the charred flesh, could hear his own strangled breaths as he fought to get something into what remained of his lungs.

Hisoka wanted to vomit. The smell was bad enough, but it was the extent of the damage that he found shocking, repulsive. Watari had told him that the Hisoka he and Tatsumi had recovered had been a fraction of himself; but it was one thing to imagine it, quite another to see the damage himself. The missing limbs, a face still mostly intact but blackened and blistered beyond his recognition . . . It was nothing to be ashamed of, yet he was ashamed. For all he had set out to make himself to be, it all came down to a hunk of meat. That's all any of them were. And it was worse than being stripped naked. At least naked he still had his humanity.

" _This is the strongest thing I've got," Watari said to Tatsumi. Empathy tugged his conscience in conflicting directions, but he had to do_ something _. He didn't want to cause Hisoka any more pain than he was already in, but a little jab of the needle might actually do some good. What were the chances he would even notice its prick in his current state? "If that doesn't knock him out—"_

Hisoka didn't want to look at himself that way any longer, but something caught his eye and would not let him turn away. Or rather, caught Watari's eye. And it was Hisoka's own. The whites were almost black, the irises a more brilliant green than Hisoka had ever seen them, but facetted in a way that was not human. Even Muraki's artificial eye and Hijiri's cursed one hadn't looked like this. But he knew it was familiar. More like the eyes of the lizards he used to catch in the grass as a child. He'd seen those eyes in his dreams. . . .

And something else Watari showed him. _As he prodded curiously at Hisoka's wounds, something seemed to move underneath. There was something under there—another layer, alive. As though the outer skin was just a casing, a suit waiting to be sloughed off. While the real body was covered in scales, slick with blood, soft and slippery as silk, but tough as mail—_

Watari jerked out of his grasp, and the scene and all the confusion and horror that went with it vanished.

"The hell gave you . . ." He fought to catch his breath, after having to relive the memory along with Hisoka. "You can't just root around in someone's brain like that!"

Hisoka couldn't believe it. _Watari_ was the one who was outraged? "You've been keeping this from me—you and Tatsumi, you both knew—"

"Knew what? You think either one of us has an answer for what you just saw, huh? If I did, don't you think you would have felt that, too? We didn't want to worry you with this—"

"You expect me to believe you hid the truth from me to _protect_ me?"

"Yes! You have enough on your plate what with Tsuzuki missing without be concerned over an unknown—"

"But this _does_ concern me, Watari, this is _about_ _me_!"

"Hisoka . . ." There, again, with the sympathy. Watari's anger over being read faded, but it was the pity that slid back into its place that Hisoka couldn't take right that moment. "Bon! Wait!"

But Hisoka didn't want to wait around to hear some other excuse. They had lied to him, maybe not outright but still a lie of omission, and he couldn't stand it anymore. He had to get out of there. He had to go somewhere where he could be alone, somewhere he could think about what he had just seen.

* * *

But the truth was he didn't want to think about it. Hisoka went back to the office to see if any new assignments awaited him, but he couldn't focus.

A jump to Chijou helped for a little bit. The shopping center where Tsuzuki used to drag him on donut runs was sufficiently crowded to distract him. Usually he hated the noise of so many others' thoughts and emotions, all vying for his psyche's attention, but today he welcomed it. Even the headache that came with it, because it made it all the more difficult for Watari's memory to resurface.

But it did, eventually. Even the bustle of a crowded shopping mall couldn't keep it out forever. And he didn't know where else he could run to to escape it.

Scales, under his own skin, and reptilian eyes . . . No, Hisoka knew, not just any reptile's. Snake's eyes. The old family legend about Ren and the yatonokami—it must not have been just a story. There was more Watari wasn't telling him, but he could piece enough together from what he had felt from Watari's mind and his own hazy childhood memories to realize the legend must have had some honest-to-goodness truth to it. It made sense. Why should his own parents be so afraid of his empathy? Could their own thoughts really be so sinful as to fear what he might learn?

Or had it been something else all along? _When they said I was a monster, they meant it. They were afraid—not of my ability, but of_ me _. That cell they called a room wasn't for my protection, but for theirs. They knew exactly what I was. My own parents. How could they_ not _know?_

His heart felt like it was being squeezed inside his chest, and Hisoka was glad that the crowds around him couldn't see him. The last thing he needed was some good citizen asking if he was OK. He certainly didn't feel like he was. Who would, to find out after so many years of life, after so many years of death, that his own family, his friends, those he trusted the most, had lied to him all along about what he was?

But that still didn't answer the question: _What_ was he?

Or, perhaps more to the point, what was inside him? Because Hisoka couldn't bear to accept for a moment that what he had seen in Watari's mind was really himself. Somehow the thought that it was some sort of foreign body, some alien parasite living inside him was easier than admitting the possibility that it was part of himself, one and the same. Tatsumi must have suspected as much, at very least. Hadn't he said something about Muraki's curse keeping something in?

Then again, Muraki had also locked up Hisoka's own memories with that curse, and his pain—things which were also an indivisible part of Hisoka. Had Muraki known about this as well? All this time Hisoka had been led to believe their meeting had been mere coincidence—or fate, as Muraki would have it, but unplanned by either of them nonetheless. Was that also a lie? Had that man sought him out, knowing what he was, from the beginning?

No, Hisoka couldn't dwell on these thoughts. That way lay madness. But the din of the crowd was getting too easy to tune out. He needed something else to distract him, and fast. But what?

* * *

For a substitute drama teacher, Terazuma was doing a terrible job. Half asleep in one of the auditorium seats, his feet up on the one in front of him, and a cup of coffee threatening at any moment to dump its contents on the floor held loosely in his hand.

Yet somehow the show went on without him. Or rehearsal, anyway. A teenage girl who looked way too serious about her role was trying to recite her lines over her male costars, who were having a much better time dueling with broom handles. The student crew was busy around the edges of the stage, occasional banging echoing from behind the curtain. And a gaggle of schoolgirls who didn't look like they served any purpose in this production whispered and giggled in the second row—probably about the sword-fighting boys.

"Hey. Terazuma."

Terazuma must have actually fallen asleep for a second, because he jumped when he heard someone speak so close to him. The coffee splashed out of its cup and onto his thighs. He yelped, and muttered a creative string of profanities.

The girls in the second row looked back at him with open mouths at the outburst. Then giggled even louder than before. Even in the dark, Hisoka could see Terazuma's cheeks and ears turning an abashed shade of deep pink.

"What's the big idea, kid," he muttered to Hisoka, "sneaking up on me like that?"

"I wasn't trying to sneak up on anyone," Hisoka said. "And anyway, aren't you supposed to be supervising this class, rather than using it as paid nap time?"

"Yeah, yeah. It isn't my fault I haven't been getting much sleep lately." The former detective grumbled, "Damn Shungei went and left me with a silence so deafening I can't even sleep through it."

 _Then I'm not the only one._ Even if the cause of their insomnia was different, the two of them had their sleepless nights to commiserate over.

Looking smart in her private school blazer, Wakaba draped herself over the back of the chair in front of them with a world-weary sigh. "You'd think all the late-night exercise he's been getting would be knocking him out."

That made her partner sit up straight and stutter, "Hey—hey, now, hold on, Kannuki! First off, the kid does not need to know that!" (Seconded, Hisoka thought.) "And second—hey, where do you get off acting so worldly all of a sudden? 'Late-night exercise' . . . What kind of euphemisms have they been teaching you here?"

Wakaba just rolled her eyes. "Don't be such an old man, Hajime. Kids these days can speak frankly about their sex lives and it's not a big deal. Everyone's doing it. Just because you were celibate for fifteen years doesn't mean you have to turn into a prude—"

" _Forced chastity,_ Kannuki. It was a condition. And _like I told you before,_ " he added in his sternest whisper, "I don't want the other students to think there might be anything . . . untoward going on between us. I'm supposed to be a teacher, here. A teacher! You wanna get us kicked out before we can solve this case?"

Wakaba crossed her arms over the seat back and glared. Yet somehow, despite their exchange of words, the vibe Hisoka was gleaning from them was decidedly—he might have even said almost unbearably—unprofessional. As in, Wakaba was giving some serious thought as to whether or not the lighting booth was currently in use, and whether anyone would notice if they made it unavailable for a little while. And Terazuma . . . well, not terribly originally, was thinking about school uniforms, and weighing the pros of blazers versus seifuku (apparently there were no cons with either). Not what Hisoka needed at the moment. And definitely too private to be aired in front of an empath.

"Anyway, Hisoka," Wakaba turned to him, "what can we do for you? Come to see how the show is getting on?"

"The show?" She said it like the pair of them had been a part of it from the beginning. "Aren't you two supposed to be investigating a case?"

"Oh, we are. But it's more convincing if we take an active part, don't you think? When in Rome and all that."

She was actually enjoying it. And, despite his lack of sleep, Hisoka would have wagered that Terazuma was too. Though of course he would never admit it.

"It's a musical mash-up of _Phantom of the Opera_ and _Doujouji_ ," Wakaba explained, though she gave no clue as to how Broadway rock opera and Noh theater were supposed to mash up, exactly. "The students adapted the music and lyrics themselves. Can't say they're not dedicated to their art."

"Thing is, though," Terazuma said through a yawn, "so is the poltergeist. We've been having a hell of a time keeping the bell from falling on some unfortunate student every time they rehearse the end of the first act with it."

"Which is where I come in!" Wakaba beamed. "The kids have no idea their Second Miko is an _actual_ miko!"

"That's one way to keep a low profile," said Hisoka.

Said Terazuma, "Yeah, but if another Kristine-hime gets herself almost crushed by that damn bell, you might find yourself playing the lead. Of all the plays to put on in a school with a poltergeist on the loose, it had to be not one but _two_ about giant cursed things that fall from the ceiling. . . ."

"Like I said," (apparently this wasn't a new conversation), "it can't be a coincidence that the understudy to the understudy of Kristine-hime now seems to be the only one able and willing to play that part. The poltergeist must be connected to her in some way. I mean, look at her," Wakaba said with a glance over her shoulder. She must have meant the girl reciting her lines—who was starting to get rather visibly peeved with the boys stealing her spotlight. "Talk about life imitating art. She's been so serious about this whole production, it's kind of scary. I don't think she'd let flying props keep her from playing the lead."

"Even if they're flying at her head?"

Of course, there was a reason Hisoka had come to see his colleagues, but now that he saw that they had completely immersed themselves in their covers— _not unlike someone I know used to do—_ he felt a little guilty pulling them away from the case. "I have a favor to ask you guys—if you think you can spare the time."

"Sure, Hisoka," said Wakaba. "What do you need?"

He took a breath, steeled himself. Perhaps it was asking too much, but it was important . . . "I need you to get me into Gensoukai."

"Absolutely not!"

To his surprise, the outburst came from Wakaba. Who quickly lowered her voice when she saw the gaggle of girls glaring at her. Hisoka didn't need empathy to detect jealousy in their glances, though Terazuma seemed oblivious that he was the reason for it.

Wakaba lowered her voice. But her words were no less sincere, and adamant. "I'm sorry, Hisoka, but I can't. You were busy recovering, so I'll give you a pass for not knowing what went down in the last month. But Todoroki managed to convince someone higher up the ladder in Judgment that opening gateways into Gensoukai was opening Enma-cho up to too much danger at this 'delicate' time."

In other words, they couldn't risk Hisoka bringing back any more powerful shiki he couldn't control.

"For now, and the foreseeable future, it's forbidden. At least, without getting the proper clearance and permission first it is, and I'll let you guess which department seems the be the only one still able to get it."

"And if someone were to go in without obeying the protocol—what, are we talking grounds for termination, here?" Hisoka asked. But Wakaba either didn't have the answer, or didn't want to give him any more hope.

"I'm not going to do it, and that's final. I'm in enough hot water as it is for sneaking you in the last time. And you remember what become of that trip."

How could anyone forget? "But that's exactly why I need to go back! Yes, I messed things up with Rikugou. All the more reason I need to know what went wrong. I need to fix it—"

"Why? So you can fuck it all up again? Er, pardon my French." Terazuma glanced around him, just to make sure no fragile teenage ears had been listening in. "But it's time someone told it to you plain. Take it from someone who knows a thing or two about bad habits, kid. This obsession with Gensoukai ain't healthy, and sending you back there is only gonna enable it further. Better to quit it cold turkey. You don't need a shiki to fight your battles for you anyway. You're better than that."

"Look. Hisoka." Wakaba sighed. "You know I want to help, I really do, but I'm not going to stick my neck out again for what, for all we know, might be a fool's errand. After what you've just been through, you could get yourself killed for good over there. At least the last time there was a possibility you might find some clue as to where Tsuzuki was in Gensoukai. But now we know where he is. And that's more than I can say for whatever you might try to bring back with you."

"Alright. You've made your point. Sorry I bothered you."

Face burning, Hisoka got up and headed with haste for the exit. He didn't need them telling him what he already knew. Did they think he was an idiot—that he couldn't see his own fault in everything that had happened? But that was why he needed this—why he needed their support. Wakaba and Terazuma were the last people he expected a lecture on red tape or unhealthy obsessions from.

He heard Wakaba running up behind him, and shook off her hand when she tried to grab his arm. He wanted to keep going, to just ignore anything she had to say, but her "Would you just listen to me for a second?" wavered with emotion, and he couldn't do that to her. He couldn't be so cruel.

"You know I know how you feel, don't you?" He started to say that no, she really didn't, but she cut him off. "It's true, none of us were nearly as close to Tsuzuki as you were, but that doesn't mean we don't have people we care about just as much. I don't know what I'd do if something so awful happened to Hajime. Well, probably something desperate like what you're trying to do now."

Hisoka looked down at his feet. His upbringing told him she deserved his apology, but he couldn't make himself give it.

But she was wrong about one thing. "You think this is about Tsuzuki."

"Well, isn't it? Hisoka . . . I know it's hard to accept, but you've hardly even said his _name_ since you came back to us. I can see this has taken a toll on you, and I don't want to belittle what you're going through in any way. But don't you think you have to keep going? For his memory, if nothing else. It's okay to let yourself mourn. I know . . ." She blushed. "I know he was more than just a partner to you."

"Mourn?" Hisoka met her eyes, taken aback by that single word. More than her thinking his relationship to Tsuzuki was somehow analogous to hers and Terazuma's. Was that what they all really thought was wrong with him? Was that what they'd all done while Hisoka was healing—mourned Tsuzuki's loss, and gotten over him? Accepted a reality without him? Moved on? _There's nothing_ to _mourn. Tsuzuki's not gone forever. We're going to get him back. How can they all just give up on him like this?_

A crash on the stage made Wakaba forget whatever she had been about to say next. There were gasps from the shocked students. Exhausted or not, Terazuma was onstage in a few leaps to help. And in the center of the commotion, a huge serpent with a huge head of flowing hair writhed and flopped about the ruined set. Hisoka's heart hammered before he realized it was only a very large puppet. And it writhed not with a life of its own, but from the kicking and fighting of one of the puppeteers trapped inside it. It was her screams that filled the auditorium. Watching on the sidelines, the girl playing the lead was frozen in shock.

"Oh no, not again," Wakaba said as she raced off to help. For which Hisoka was rather glad, as it gave him an excuse to leave without saying goodbye.

Now he remembered. There was a reason he had gotten a feeling of sinking dread in his gut when Wakaba said the drama club was staging a version of _Doujouji._ The protagonist from the first act went mad with lust and revenge and turned herself into a giant serpentine dragon.

Snakes, he cursed as he turned to leave, feeling his skin crawl. It seemed like everywhere he looked, the universe was trying to tell him the same thing. He just wished it would try telling him in plain Japanese.

* * *

Natsume was jogging in the park when Hisoka tracked him down. In a zip-up Day-Glo jacket, a baseball cap turned backwards on his head, modern earbuds attached to a Walkman that looked like it belonged in a museum, and glasses tucked safely away (they fogged up too much when he ran), it was much easier to see him as the college student he had been when he died.

Ever-present K was still nearby, albeit hunting for lizards in the bushes, though Hisoka suspected she was never quite out of earshot.

"You know that favor you owe me?" Hisoka said when Natsume pulled out an earbud. "I want to call it in."

"Already? You sure you don't want to save it for something big?"

"This is something big. I need your help getting into Gensoukai."

Natsume stopped his jog entirely. Though he was still breathing hard, an eerie sobriety came over him with the mention of that place. He stopped the cassette in his Walkman, and the glasses came back out. A moment later, so did K.

Still he had the gall to pretend he didn't know what Hisoka was talking about. "What makes you think I can help you with that? Last I checked, I'm not a Shinto priest."

"No, but your partner here can hack into just about anything. And Gensoukai is a digital world. I'm betting K would have no problem opening up a portal. Unless Gensoukai's firewalls are that much tougher to crack than Mother's."

And there was the magic word. Natsume gestured for Hisoka to follow him, looking around to ensure that no one was watching them. It must have taken all his self-restraint not to grab Hisoka and throw him into the bushes to keep him quiet.

"Let's suppose K _can_ do what you're asking," he said in a low voice once he was sure they were alone. "Why do you want to get into Gensoukai so badly?"

Hisoka tried to explain it, how he was desperate to learn what had happened to Rikugou since that night at Sakuraiji's house, to say nothing of how he had survived. He even mentioned something about looking into why Terazuma's communication with his own shiki had ceased, hoping it would make his motives look a little less selfish than they truly were.

He made no mention of the dream of snakes, however, or the scales Watari had seen on Hisoka's body. _It's none of his business anyway. It's a personal matter._ But even Hisoka had to admit there was more to it than that. If Natsume knew about the scales, would he think that was the question Hisoka really sought answers to, and would he agree to help at all? Or go running to Tatsumi or the chief at the first opportunity? Either way, if there was any chance revealing that part could stop Hisoka from reuniting with Rikugou, he had to keep the secret clutched tight to his chest. At least until he had some answers to share himself.

Natsume listened patiently to his reasons, nodding occasionally and not interrupting or suspecting anything was being left out until the end. At which point he said, "I understand all that, but I have to say I don't think it's a good idea. Too dangerous."

"Because Judgment has put a moratorium on trips to Gensoukai?"

"That," Natsume said with a roll of the eyes, "and I've probably used up the other departments' good will toward me with enough supernatural shit of late. But more to the point, I think what you've got there is a pretty poorly thought-out plan. You have _no_ idea what's happened to your shiki since he—literally—blew up in your face, or what kind of enemies he's made for himself back home. Let alone _if_ he will even tolerate the sight of you anymore, and not try to end you immediately. Yet you expect me to just let you go in there alone. With, what, a packed lunch and a 'See you when you get home, honey'?"

When he put it that way, Hisoka did feel a bit foolish. But it was going to work. It had to.

K got her human's attention with a curt little meow. When Natsume turned to her, she blinked and twitched her ear and tail in Natsume's direction, the meaning of which was completely lost on Hisoka.

"No," Natsume said to her at the end of it. "I don't think having a traveling companion is going to solve the gaping holes in this plan. It's still a terrible plan."

Christ, it was creepy when they understood each other like that. "What's she saying?" Hisoka couldn't believe he was actually asking that. "She think you should come with me?"

" _God_ no!" Natsume laughed. "That's a worse idea than you going in alone! Not to mention, impossible."

"You're right," Hisoka said after giving it some thought. "We'd be found out right away if we both went. And, as my partner, you'd be implicated by association."

"Well, I'll be implicated no matter what if I agree to this, won't I? No, I mean it's _physically_ impossible," Natsume said. "I'm not allowed to enter Gensoukai. Look, it's a long story, and I don't want to get into it now—"

"It's because of your possession, isn't it?"

The look Natsume shot him was not one Hisoka was a stranger to these days. It was a peculiar melange of betrayal and shame, violation and indignant pride—the knowledge that someone you thought you trusted had gone over your head—or even _into_ your head—to learn your secret. Hisoka knew something about Natsume that Natsume didn't want him to, and Natsume blamed him for the infraction of his privacy. Not exactly how Hisoka had wanted this conversation to go. Not when he desperately needed the other's cooperation.

"I may have convinced Tatsumi to tell me why your partnership with Tsuzuki ended," Hisoka said. "However you feel about it, Natsume, I deserved to know what kind of a person I was paired up with. Just like you had every right to know about the circumstances of my death. It's not something I like sharing either, but if that's what it takes to earn your trust—"

"Then you know about the seals."

Natsume pushed down one sock to expose his ankle. At first, Hisoka saw nothing but bare skin; but as he watched, a banded pattern began to materialize, like the pale violet outline of veins beneath the skin, only glowing, and deliberate. Like shackles. They appeared around his wrists as well, along with a glowing character from the old script meaning "closed" in the center of his forehead.

"This is why I can't go with you into Gensoukai," he said. "I don't know if I'd even survive the trip with these things on, or if crossing over the threshold of that world would rip apart my atoms like some sort of giant bug zapper." As if he could feel it itching under his skin, Natsume scratched at the sigil on his forehead and pulled his cap down over it. Seconds later, it and the bands around his wrists slowly faded into invisibility again. "I was told that if I somehow _did_ survive the crossing, I'd have shiki on me before I even knew which way was up, trying to either eradicate, possess, or eat me. Which I know sounds like the worst slumber party game ever, but if shiki are anything like demons, I don't doubt it's true. Either way, I'd rather not try."

Hisoka shrugged. "Then I'll go alone. It's no trouble to me."

But Natsume was exchanging meaningful glances with K again, and he knew that wasn't the end of the story. "K says she wants you to take her with you. As a chaperone of sorts. And I believe she knows what she's talking about. She has contacts there who could protect you."

"Then why do I get the strong feeling that you don't like the idea?"

"Don't get me wrong. K's competence, I don't doubt for a second. She knows her stuff, and even if she doesn't look like much, she can hold her own in a fight. She's the one who put these seals on me. It's her job to make sure I'm never susceptible to demonic possession again.

"Tatsumi didn't tell you that part, did he?" Natsume said to Hisoka's unsettled expression. "K isn't just my partner. She's also my minder, my watchdog. Er, watch _cat_. (Sorry, K, it's just a figure of speech, no offense intended.) She's sworn not to let me out of range of communication. And that's why the prospect of sending her to a whole 'nother plane of reality with you doesn't exactly sit well with me. If she's in Gensoukai with you, who's keeping an eye on me out here? Not to mention, if she's your ticket in in the first place, who's gonna pull you two back out?"

"She's also _your_ ticket into Mother's systems. If K's in there with me, that more or less puts your project on standby."

"True, true," Natsume said half to himself. "Yet another reason I'm not fond of this plan. . . ." But unless Natsume planned on Muraki dying while Hisoka was in the Imaginary World—or unless he planned on getting into some other form of trouble, Hisoka didn't see how it affected his partner that much.

"So, does that mean you two are going to help me? Or should I tell Tatsumi about our little conversation from earlier?"

Natsume let out a long-suffering sigh as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Give us the day to talk it over. Okay?" But Hisoka could sense that, for the most part, he had already capitulated. "And meet me tonight after business hours at my cubicle in Billing. One way or another, I'll have an answer for you then."

* * *

The overhead fluorescents were shut off when Hisoka reached Billing that night, only the glow of computer monitor screensavers to cast the place in an eerie, faerie-world-like air.

The bar of light on the carpet from Natsume's desk lamp guided his way. There, Hisoka found his partner occupied with a game of solitaire. He swiveled in his chair when he sensed Hisoka's presence. "I hope you packed a change of clothes."

"Does this mean you agree to do it?"

Natsume shrugged. "The two of us discussed it at length, but ultimately, it wasn't up to me. K wouldn't let me say no."

As if to confirm that, K slow-blinked up at Hisoka.

"And you always do what K tells you?" _Should I be suspicious? If K wants this, what does she hope to get out of it? Probably not something as simple as fatty tuna._

Natsume laughed. "Kid, I _have_ to do what K tells me to! She's my minder, remember?" He switched off his light as he shot to his feet, grabbing his blazer off the back of his chair. "Shall we?"

After the labyrinth of cubicles and massive copy machines, the duo led Hisoka to another floor, where they passed through immense halls of old servers. The whole place smelled of warm electronics; their ears were filled with the ambient hum of so many digital minds busy processing. It was hard to believe that Gensoukai itself, or at least parts of it, might have been housed on some of the very servers they walked past. Its code had to be stored somewhere, though when Hisoka visited the place it felt as large as an entire planet. Stranger things existed in the world, he supposed. Like whole planes of reality encapsulated in books. In light of that, a universe inside a computer wasn't so outlandish.

Hisoka wasn't sure where he was expecting to end up. Maybe in a massive laboratory with a star gate or other sort of magical portal mounted in it, or at very least a supercollider. But when they arrived and Natsume switched on the lights, what greeted Hisoka's eyes in the center of the small room was a device roughly the size and shape of a shoebox with a mass of tubes and wires snaking out of one end of it. A device he remembered very clearly from a previous case with Natsume as a resurrected one of Watari's old rejected inventions, affectionately dubbed Xul.

"You can't be serious."

At the tone of his voice—skeptical would have been putting it lightly—Natsume looked back at Hisoka, and told him, "Not to worry, I think K and I just about have all the bugs worked out of it—"

" _Just about?_ " Hisoka said, having serious second thoughts about even stepping foot inside the same room as the device. "Last time we used that thing, it burnt the creature we tried to put in it to a crisp!"

"Actually, if our suspicions are correct," by which he apparently meant his and K's, "the problem arose when we tried to _retrieve_ the shoggoth from the dimension it had been stored in. You see, pocket dimensions are notoriously unstable . . ."

But a look at Hisoka's face told Natsume that, to his partner, the particulars weren't nearly as important as the end result.

"Never mind the details," he tried instead, clearing his throat and trying to put a nonchalant spin on things, while K hopped on a nearby laptop that was hooked up to the box. "Because we're not going to be using Xul to create a new dimension. We're just dialing into one that already exists, which is gonna be a whole lot easier. Xul's going to open a nice little Einstein-Rosen bridge for you two to simply walk across. . . ."

Somehow seeing a cat inputting the proper values on the computer did not exactly put Hisoka at ease. But he didn't see that he had much choice. If he wanted to get into Gensoukai, this seemed to be the only option currently available to him. Other than putting in a formal request, but he sincerely doubted Todoroki would grant it, and not heap some disciplinary measure on him just for trying. Better to beg forgiveness later than ask permission, since asking permission was likely to get him no closer to his goals, and might even set him further back.

"I hope you got all the slime monster out of it first," Hisoka grumbled, not bothering to hide his worry as the machine hummed to life and the doors in the top snapped open.

"Don't be silly," Natsume chuckled. "It's perfectly safe—as long as you're not standing too close to this thing when the antimatter is activated. Speaking of which, you might want to back up about three meters. Er, a little more. This baby sure packs a punch."

Hisoka had just opened his mouth to ask if he was sufficiently out of the way yet when the box began to rattle violently in place. While the overhead lights dimmed from the sudden flux of power to Xul, they flared in the machine's interior, and Hisoka jumped back when a sound like the crack of a whip split the air. He felt a sharp tug as Xul sucked the air of their room in toward itself, and braced himself as he would against a windstorm.

"Wait for it," Natsume said, watching the computer screen, the glow of which reflected wickedly on his lenses. "We should achieve stabilization in three, two, one. . . ."

Once he stopped feeling like he would be sucked in at any second, Hisoka inched closer to the device. He craned his neck to try to see inside, and was amazed. Warped as if through a fish-eye lens, or on the surface of a crystal ball, was a bright blue sky streaked with thin clouds, and brilliantly green trees—a landscape more vibrant than real life, like only a dream or the Imaginary World could possess. And since Hisoka was fairly certain he wasn't dreaming all this: "That's it. That's Gensoukai."

Natsume let out a deep breath. "Certainly seems that way. Boy, I wasn't sure for a second there. I mean, it all made perfect sense on _paper—_ "

"You mean to tell me you've never actually tried this before? And I suppose you expect me to just trust you that it's safe and take a flying leap into that thing!"

"That's the plan." Natsume blinked up at him. "But don't take my word for it. If K says it's safe, you don't have anything to worry about."

Right, Hisoka thought, put my trust in a house cat. But when he looked over at the laptop for a second opinion, K was nowhere to be seen.

Hisoka was completely unprepared for it when she jumped up on the back of his neck. Small though she was, she had a way of using her momentum and her claws to throw him off balance just enough to let gravity finish the job. Even if Hisoka had tried to catch himself, he was already too close to the device and the open wormhole inside for it to do him any good. Xul sucked him down into itself, and all Hisoka had time to see before Meifu disappeared from view was Natsume waving goodbye.

It was like being pulled along by a strong tide. Only instead of being surrounded by dark water, it was a warm light that had hold of Hisoka and was dragging him where it wanted. He raised his arms to shield his eyes, and felt wind surround and ruffle him. A different air than what had been trapped underground with them among the humming servers: fresh, scented of moisture, and of exotic plants and flowers that he could not even begin to name.

He opened his eyes, and found himself floating in a cloud-streaked sky. Below him, jagged rocks stretched like the petrified fingers of some ancient giant towards the sky, and densely-packed forest filled in the valleys in between. He didn't recognize the landscape, didn't see any buildings or other signs of civilization anywhere around. When Natsume had said K knew of a back door into Gensoukai, Hisoka had assumed that meant somewhere within a day's walk of the Capital, if not in the city itself.

But she seemed to know where she was going, or at least not be daunted by their surroundings. Ears back and a look of concentration on her face, K paddled through the air towards the ground. So Hisoka thought he had better follow suit, if he didn't want to be left behind. There was a small clearing a little ways ahead of them, and they aimed for that.

When they were on solid ground again, Hisoka felt even more lost than before. Huge trees surrounded them on all sides, each one looking very much like the last and hung with moss that waved delicately on the slightest breeze like a woman's hair. "I hope this place looks more familiar to you than it does to me," he mumbled to K, but didn't know what good it would do. He was stuck here, with only a cat for company.

A cat he was talking to like a person. It felt weird. Embarrassing even. But, Hisoka had to remind himself, just because he couldn't understand K didn't mean that she didn't understand everything he said to her. He would have to get used to thinking of her as another human, he supposed.

And it seemed she had already started thinking of him as another cat. She took off into the forest without another look back, apparently expecting Hisoka to have picked up on some non-verbal cat cue to follow.

"Wait!" Hisoka called out. "Damn cat. . . ."

He pushed through ferns that came up to his knees as he struggled along in the direction he'd seen K go, and after a few minutes of this, found her resting on a log, just waiting for him to catch up. An expression on her face as if to say "This is going to take longer than I thought." Hisoka could have sworn the impatient switch of her tail was meant as some sort of insult.

He glared back. "Just get us to a shelter before nightfall and I promise I will buy you fatty tuna on our next case."

K made an effort to stay close after that, looking back over her shoulder every so often to make sure Hisoka was still behind her.

Not that she couldn't hear him. Dodging protruding roots and kicking his way through densely-packed ferns wore Hisoka out faster than usual, and on top of that the forest seemed to get more humid the farther in they went. He was glad K's white and orange patches made her easy to see in the undergrowth, but who knew what else in the forest had noticed their conspicuous progress. The canopy was alive with the queer calls of unknown birds and insects, and Hisoka half expected exotic, lower-level shikigami to pop out and challenge them at every turn. This _was_ the Imaginary World; he would not have been too surprised if there were dinosaurs lurking in these forests, too.

They might have only been there ten or fifteen minutes when Hisoka heard the first peal of thunder. Great, he thought, it would be just their luck if a rainstorm were on the way.

To make matters worse, upon hearing it K immediately chirruped and bounded off, leaving a stranded Hisoka to try and guess where she might have gone.

He caught up to her again in another small clearing. Not exactly where he wanted to be in a storm. But a glance up at the sky showed no dark rain clouds in sight. Yet, still, the thunder boomed, rolling closer—

Foliage rustled and branches snapped somewhere in the trees ahead of them. It couldn't be thunder after all. Lightning didn't cause that kind of destruction. And the rumbling in the earth was the distinctive sound of feet. Very large feet. _Shit, there_ are _dinosaurs. If I'm going to be trampled by a brontosaurus—_

Something massive and gray broke through the trees and the moss, and Hisoka couldn't help his shout as he leapt out of the way. It was as big as an elephant, and snorting a gale of hot air as it skidded to a halt.

But when the dust cleared, he saw with some surprise that it was in fact a huge iron-gray horse that had burst into the clearing, tossing a long pale mane and prancing around K.

Whose tail was straight up as she mewed and blinked at the horse, headbutting and arching into its snout.

Hisoka had seen her do this with Natsume enough to understand that this was K's way of showing affection, so that put him at a bit more ease. At very least, K knew this beast and it didn't seem to plan on killing her. "K, what's going on?"

"Oh-ho, and what's this?" a voice came out of the horse like a whiny mixed with a laugh as it turned its head towards him. "You must be Hisoka! Mistress K's said good things about you."

K, saying good things about him? Hisoka couldn't help a snort. "When?"

"Just now," said the horse, as though that should have been obvious. "And it is an honor to finally meet you, young man. Naturally, your reputation in this land precedes you, and not all of it good, it gives me no pleasure to say. But if Mistress K vouches for your character, then I am inclined to believe the rumors have been quite blown out of proportion."

Was that supposed to be a compliment or an insult? While Hisoka fumbled for a proper response, the horse let out another horsey laugh. "But I do apologize! I know who you are, young human, but clearly you have no idea who _I_ am." It bowed its head toward the ground, and bent its front legs. Was Hisoka imagining things, or was that meant to be a curtsey? "I am Mistress K's guardian, Senrima."

"The Thousand-Li Horse?" _Now_ they were getting somewhere! If the legends were true, it didn't really matter how far they were from civilization. "Can you really cover a thousand li in a single day?"

The horse snorted, pawing the ground, as though itching to go already. "Can I! That sounds like a challenge if I've ever heard one. I look forward to making a believer out of you, human."

And Hisoka didn't doubt it would. Senrima was a magnificent creature to behold, not just for its size alone, but for its waterfall of a mane and tail that sparkled like flames reflected in steel when the light hit them right, and clouds of steam billowing around its metal hooves and muscular legs. It had to be a shiki of immense power. Hisoka didn't need his empathy to sense that; the horse encapsulated it in every outward aspect of its form. How a mere house cat could have won such a guardian was a story he was sure to get out of the horse before this trip was over.

"But it still takes time to get anywhere. And if we're going to find some shelter in this jungle before our bedtimes, as Mistress K insists you are keen to do, I suggest we go now. Climb aboard, if you please."

Well, Hisoka wasn't about to argue with a god, let alone one that made such excellent sense. Though it was all he could do to hold on to its mane for dear life when Senrima bounded back into the sky like a shot. Sitting secure in his lap, K seemed to have none of his trouble, but rather appeared perfectly at home, riding barebacked on what amounted to an open-air jet plane.

* * *

 **Author's note:** _First, any wonky switch-ups in tense or italics is entirely intentional. Apologies if it is difficult to read._

 _Regarding the high school musical: Kristine-hime is a reference to the heroine of_ Phantom _, Christine, but also to Kiyohime from the noh play_ Doujouji _whose role actually bears more resemblance to the Phantom. After he rejects her, Kiyohime turns into a giant fiery serpent and attacks the handsome young priest she's obsessed with, who takes refuge inside a temple bell, which she uses to cook him to death. This is all told in a flashback by the abbot who is trying to exorcise Kiyohime's now-demonic spirit from the bell (the parallel of_ _the chandelier in_ Phantom _in this instance)_ _. How one goes about mashing those two stories up—let's just pretend these high school drama club students had a vision._

 _The Xul episode referenced comes at the beginning of the previous part of this series, Gone to Earth, for those who read that story a long, long time ago (and yes, "Xul" is essentially a containment unit from_ Ghostbusters).

Senrima, _or the Thousand-Li (sometimes translated as "league" or "mile") Horse, is an established mythical creature often compared to Pegasus and said to be too fast and elegant for any mortal man to mount (so why not a cat, am I right?). Chollima (Korean) and Qianlima (Chinese) might be more recognizable names to mythology buffs. In this version, I'm keeping the flying ability but making wings optional, just cos not everything in Gensoukai has to have wings to fly._


	15. Go again

Somehow, simple repetition has a way of breaking down the will better than force. Tell a man without any warning or preamble that what he doesn't believe in is true, and he will reject your claim and all evidence even if he has to stick his fingers in his ears and whistle a tune. But expose him to little pieces of it over a long enough period of time, and he will convince himself he believed the whole time.

It was amazing how quickly a new routine, even one he found repulsive, could start to feel normal. So much so, in fact, that Tsuzuki had lost count of how many days they had spent sparring, though he was certain it couldn't be as many as it felt like. Muraki's instruction seemed more like a trial by error on Tsuzuki's part, the reason given that none of what Muraki showed him—or rather, inflicted on him—was beyond Tsuzuki's ability to learn and counter. The more blows he failed to block, the more incentive he had to watch for cues as to what was coming, and improve his reaction time. And he failed to block enough that the only times he felt like he earned a victory were when he repeated that day's maneuvers in his dreams.

Tsuzuki never would have thought he could ever get used to a regimen that put him in physical contact so constantly with Muraki. Yet with each new day of "training," it became easier to bear Muraki's touch. There was nothing overt in it when they sparred, the only intent seeming to be to challenge Tsuzuki, to push him further, like a student receiving necessary instruction. Like a respected opponent, rather than the object of desire.

It was Tsuzuki who found himself blushing when he found himself pinned to the ground, immobilized, Muraki's thigh across his throat.

"That time was better," Muraki treated him to the rare bit of praise as he helped Tsuzuki up. "Your reaction time has improved, but you're still slow protecting your left side. Natural for someone who is right-hand dominant, but you'll need to do better still."

He moved to a far corner of the room, where a pitcher of water had been placed on a small table in the hopes it would avoid their struggle. So far today it had been successful. And when Muraki poured out two glasses, Tsuzuki took that to mean he could take a breather. Though he had been wrong in that assumption before.

"Better still for what?" Tsuzuki said as he caught his breath. Muraki had never been subtle about all this leading up to something else.

But, as usual, he went to great lengths to avoid saying outright what that something was. "Isn't it enough that you should always be prepared for a fight? One can never be certain when or whence it will come."

Tsuzuki tensed at the choice of words, but when Muraki turned, it was only to hand him a glass of water. Still, he kept himself on edge, expecting a surprise attack. Doubtless that was what Muraki wanted of him. It was due to his conditioning, after all, that Tsuzuki felt he need always be on his guard.

"Still," he said as he cradled his water, undrunk, in his hands. "I know there's more to this, more than you want to tell me. You're still plotting something, and I don't appreciate being kept in the dark. Especially when I'm so obviously a part of it."

"Is that why you're holding back? Trying to feel me out, Tsuzuki?"

Tsuzuki almost laughed. "What makes you think I'm holding back?" He felt like he was giving their bouts everything he had. At least, he was physically and mentally worn out enough by the end of them. Did Muraki know something that Tsuzuki didn't even know about himself?

"I suppose it's fair to say I haven't provided you enough reason to expend your full effort," Muraki said. "True life-and-death situations are doubtless more motivating than what we're doing here. This must come off as so much a game to you. After all, you have no reason to fear serious injury or death, and it seems so long as I have no mortal victim to hold over you and incite your desire for revenge, you can't muster up the proper will."

"You think I'm not fighting back harder because I don't want to hurt you?" Was Tsuzuki imagining it, or was that what Muraki was really accusing him of?

"Why not? You may not believe me, but I was like you once. Reluctant to raise a hand against someone I had no real intention of harming. I had to be desensitized to that fear, both in my medical training and in self-defense. It's an understandable precaution when you have made a career of protecting life—"

"Forgive me if I can't exactly swallow that," Tsuzuki scoffed. "You? Protect life? I guess we all have to make a living somehow, but in all the time I've known you it seems you've been doing your darnedest to ruin and destroy it. That should be reason enough to want you to suffer, don't you think?"

That earned him a little smirk.

"You don't think I truly understand what plagues you," Muraki said. "You seem to think I've always been this way. But I too struggled to accept what I was. Some days I wasn't sure it was worth continuing to live, knowing that my urges were not something I could cure, but an indelible part of me. But I learned to embrace them as the way things were meant to be. I would have thought seventy-five years would be ample time for anyone to come to grips with their true purpose."

"If you're trying to say I'm a killer, like you—"

"That is precisely the paradox of our existences. You wish to help people, but it seems the way you are best suited to do that is by ending their lives." Muraki shrugged. "You can deny all you want that that makes you a killer, but by the very definition of the term . . ."

But Tsuzuki couldn't deny it, and wouldn't. That was a truth about himself he knew all too well. How many new partners had he been able to tell that to with an ironic sort of pride, as he explained to them the virtues—and difficulties—of being a shinigami? If he couldn't reach a certain level of peace with that aspect of his existence, he wasn't sure he would have made it as long as he had.

"I'm different than you, though. I don't find any enjoyment in killing."

"Not even your enemies?"

Some little voice way back in Tsuzuki's mind strained to be heard, but Tsuzuki kept firm control over it and his mouth shut.

"And what about your cases. The souls you're summoned to take. From what I understand, killing them is intended to be for their own good—"

"Maybe I should give Enma your resume, you sound interested enough in the position," Tsuzuki said with a sarcasm he couldn't make himself feel. Except he was pretty sure Enma already knew Muraki's work history, seeing how much of it was against his ministry.

The doctor chuckled. "Problem is, I understand one needs to be deceased first."

 _That could be arranged._ But Tsuzuki wished he had never joked about that. It felt like a sacrilege somehow, imagining Muraki as having any say in the fates of souls. "This isn't the sort of job a person takes on for an excuse to kill."

"Right." Muraki nodded solemnly. "It's to maintain balance, isn't it, between the living and the dead? To preserve the order of the universe? Or so you keep telling yourself to justify what you do, year after year.

"But I wonder. Do you really believe it? Or is it all that keeps you sane and functional? Enma won't let you pass on. Though, clearly, the impulse to kill yourself hasn't diminished with time."

"It's an honor to serve," Tsuzuki said through clenched jaw. "A shinigami's calling is a noble one. We help souls find peace."

"Other than the ones that end up in Hell, I take it you mean. But enough of the platitudes, Tsuzuki. Be honest with me. There's no one here to judge you for your opinions. If it were up to you—if you had Enma's power to decide who lives and who dies, who reaps their eternal reward and who suffers for their sins, what would you _really_ do with it?"

There was a trap here somewhere. "What do you think I'd do with it?"

"Answering a question with another question is not an answer."

"I don't see the point of this line of questioning anyway—"

Tsuzuki began to turn away, as though in doing so bodily he might somehow avoid answering. But it only provided Muraki the opportunity to attack.

He grabbed Tsuzuki's wrist that was closest to him, yanking it behind his back before Tsuzuki had a moment to protest. The glass fell to the floor, spilling its contents. But it was the metallic rattle that startled Tsuzuki to stillness when it should have spurred him to action, the cold touch of steel around his wrists that made his heart leap in that old fear. The fear of being in any way made more powerless in Muraki's presence.

The doctor was fast, and had the cuffs on Tsuzuki while the shinigami was still sputtering and cursing. "What is it with you and tying me up!" Tsuzuki finally managed.

He could hear Muraki's grin in the exhale beside his ear. "You mean I haven't yet made that clear to you?"

"What you've made clear is that you have a serious obsession with doing sick things to me. Makes sense you wouldn't want me to fight back. Sort of gets in the way of your plans."

While he was saying this, Tsuzuki's mind and his powers were working. Muraki might have taken away his ability to call for outside help, but not all of his power came from forces greater than himself. Nor was this the first time Tsuzuki had found himself in cuffs. He'd been on a few cases and made a few mistakes that landed him in hot water with the living world's law enforcement. To speak nothing of that one time Tatsumi thought he could benefit from a little corporal discipline. . . .

Tsuzuki felt the vibration of the lock's inner workings click, and the cuffs loosened. No need for bruised or broken bones this time. He tossed the cuffs back at Muraki's chest. "Anyway, you forgot even we inept shinigami have basic telekinetic abilities. You didn't honestly think that would be much of a challenge, did you?"

Famous last words. Muraki charged him, knocking the breath out of Tsuzuki and slamming them both to the floor. They grappled. And Tsuzuki was certain now that Muraki had been holding back for the benefit of Tsuzuki's "training," as he felt as though anything he did was entirely useless. Possibly allowed Muraki to get him into a hold he couldn't break himself out of that much easier. From somewhere Muraki produced a length of silk cording, and within seconds had tied a disbelieving Tsuzuki's wrists together behind his back, and cinched them tight.

Tsuzuki bit down on a curse. This was worse than the cuffs. Because as soon as he tried to push himself up, Muraki knotted his ankles together, too, and left him hog-tied. "Let's see your telekinesis get you out of this."

Refusing to give him the satisfaction, Tsuzuki just growled. He supposed if he concentrated long enough, he could find a way to undo each knot, but they were painfully tight and he, too pissed off at being strung up like an animal to concentrate. Not to mention, being tricked. He was certain now those cuffs were just a distraction.

"While you're working on that," Muraki went on, having barely broken a sweat, "why not answer my question."

"Which question was that?" Tsuzuki gritted back.

"What you would do if you could be Enma for a day. I'm curious. It's merely a hypothetical, of course," Muraki added, as though it needed the clarification, "and whatever you say will not leave this room. No need to answer diplomatically on _my_ account."

"I see what you're trying to do." Muraki's curious hum told Tsuzuki he wasn't wrong. "You're trying to turn me against Enma and against my friends. Make me believe what we shinigami do is wrong."

"And is it working?"

"Do you think that hasn't all crossed my mind before?" Tsuzuki shot back. "That I haven't been kept awake nights by this exact question?" Muraki might have thought of this like a game, but it was so old to Tsuzuki, it had long lost its humor. "Of course I hate that we have to take people's lives. Of course that makes me a killer. I know all that. But if not me, who? The job has to get done, people _have_ to die. Eventually. Why not someone like me, someone who's sympathetic to what they're going through, who can give them dignity and a certain amount of peace? Better me than a psychopath who kills for sport," Tsuzuki growled as he twisted in his restraints, "like someone here I could mention. . . ."

"Come, now, Tsuzuki." Muraki crossed his arms over his chest, unimpressed. "You don't expect me to believe that you've truly swallowed the company line."

"It's true, isn't it? People die, in order to make room for those who are born. It's been that way forever."

"But who says it _has_ to be?" Muraki roared. "Enma? The Lords of the Dead? Biology? The latter could be fixed if the former weren't standing in the way, sabotaging any progress that threatens their power! Don't tell me you wouldn't rejoice if it was decreed tomorrow that Death was no more! It would make you irrelevant, sure, but somehow I get the feeling you wouldn't mind becoming irrelevant."

Of course it was a tempting idea. Didn't everyone harbor that hope inside themselves at one time or another in their lives? The religions Tsuzuki had grown up around had promised it, and it had certainly been a popular idea, judging by its tenacity and the number of faithful believers. Eternal life. Only most people would admit that it was more of a metaphor than a future reality. They would look at what he had, his eternal afterlife, and think it a kind of hell, a curse, not something to aspire to.

"Your grandfather spent his life searching for immortality, too," Tsuzuki recalled. "And how many were robbed of their lives in the pursuit of that, huh? If that isn't your idea of irony, I don't know what is. The only thing he ever left to show for it was you—a doctor who takes lives rather than saves them."

"I have saved more lives than you ever did," Muraki said, smile dropping.

"And taken more than me too, no doubt."

"The power to choose who lives and who dies should not rest in the hands of gods or demons, like your Great King Enma, whichever he is."

"Maybe not. But it _certainly_ shouldn't rest in the hands of a monster like you!"

"Tell me truthfully, Tsuzuki." Muraki's manic grin was back, his eyes all but shining with morbid curiosity as he leaned down over Tsuzuki. "I want to hear it from your lips. Tell me that, if you had Enma's power yourself, you wouldn't seize it. Tell me you wouldn't leap at the opportunity to pass judgment on the wicked and restore the innocent to life."

"Yes! All right? If it was up to me, of course that's what I would want! Every soul deserves justice!"

"On that we're agreed. Now, don't you feel better now that you've admitted what you truly believe?"

But that didn't mean it was right, Tsuzuki wanted to shout back. He didn't see what good it would do, though. Muraki seemed pretty convinced of his own deserts where the power over life and death was concerned. Doubtless it ran in the family.

And Tsuzuki did feel better, if not for the reason Muraki was thinking. While they were speaking, he had been twisting in his restraints—for all Muraki knew, trying to loosen the knots in his bonds. In fact, it was his back trouser pocket that Tsuzuki was trying to reach, and the fuda he had folded up there. With his hands already trapped behind his back, Muraki had made it easy for Tsuzuki to disguise what he was doing.

The problem was, in this position, Tsuzuki couldn't read which was which. For that matter, he wasn't sure they would work. Muraki hadn't granted him any writing materials, but the yellowed blank pages in the front and back of some of the old books in the library worked as a fair medium, as did the little shavings of chocolate Tsuzuki had managed to slip undetected into his pocket, and store up and melt for a kind of ink later. He'd never made fuda out of food or old paper, however. He had no way of knowing if it would even work.

No way except to try it, and see what would happen. He managed to get one free and positioned correctly in his fingers—no easy task, working around the cord. He took a guess as to which one it was—a hope, really—and muttered the activating word: "Explode!"

There was a snap, of sudden sparks. And then another one, that of rope giving way. Tsuzuki could feel the skin on his hands singeing, but they were free. And Muraki was close enough, his face just _right there,_ Tsuzuki might only get one shot at this—

He raised another fuda before him, catching only a glimpse of the words written on it, but glimpse enough for the word of command to form on his lips by second nature—

But the stunt with the cord had given Muraki enough time to figure out what he was up to. At least, just enough time for him to reach out and grab Tsuzuki's wrist, twist it until the piece of old paper was pointing away from him. The last syllable came out of Tsuzuki in a cry of pain as those sensitive nerves in his hand were abused. The fuda misfired, seizing them both in what felt like an electric shock.

Even through that pain, Muraki was relentless. He tore the other fuda from Tsuzuki's pocket, staring in surprised displeasure at the Frankenstein's monster Tsuzuki had made of his library's collection. "Once again it appears my trust in your ability _not_ to deface my property behind my back was unfounded—"

"The task was to get out of my restraints. Am I right?" Worried he probably played his hand way too soon, Tsuzuki tried to keep the focus on the exercise. "Well, I used my head. I came up with a solution, and I got out."

"By changing the variables of the experiment so as to render it a waste of both our time! The point of the exercise was to escape from your bonds without any access to outside resources."

"So I didn't play by your imaginary rules? I can't believe _that's_ the part you're upset about, here! I could have blasted half your face off with one of those things, if I'd really wanted to, and you're getting yourself bent out of shape because I _cheated_?"

For a moment, Muraki looked as though he had much more he wanted to add to that subject. And it didn't seem like him, in Tsuzuki's opinion, to be flustered and at a loss for what he really wanted to say.

Eventually, calming himself, Muraki began again in a cold tone: "You fail to understand what's truly at stake—"

"Again, if you would just _tell me_ in words I can understand—"

"Perhaps more practice is in order," Muraki said as he moved quickly toward the door.

Tsuzuki hurried to follow him, but the doctor was ready for that, holding up one of Tsuzuki's makeshift fuda and whispering the activating word. A barrage of fireballs shot out—not as effective as if Tsuzuki had been able to make the charm properly, but stinging and blinding enough that he instinctively raised his arms to shield himself, and stopped in his tracks long enough for Muraki to make his escape.

As expected, the door was locked when Tsuzuki reached it.

* * *

By the time Tsuzuki freed himself several hours later, all the books in the library were gone. And with them, every fuda that Tsuzuki had made and stored behind their pages. He knew at a glance it was useless to check and see if any of his stashes between the shelves and cushions of the couch had gone undetected. Muraki would have been thorough.

The smug smile he tried but could not keep from his lips told Tsuzuki enough. Though, perhaps, the anger Tsuzuki did not even attempt to hide was more telling. "You should have known it wouldn't work," Muraki told him from his seat on the couch, as though Tsuzuki were a child, making a simple, stupid mistake like children make.

"So you destroyed your own property because of a few fuda?"

Muraki's smile grew. "What makes you think I destroyed anything? I merely removed any incentive you might have to try the same tact again. I thought I made it clear when we started this. You already possess all the weapons you need to defend yourself in any situation."

Tsuzuki's anger rose like clockwork within him at the word "weapon." But he willed himself to calm. Getting upset about it and pushing back was just the sort of reaction that gave Muraki an excuse to patronize him.

"What is this all about?" he said instead, trying all the while to unclench his jaw. "Why the Houdini games? I think I've 'practiced' enough I've earned some answers, Muraki."

To his astonishment, and relief, the tactic worked.

"I believe I mentioned when you first woke to consciousness in this place," Muraki said as he stood, "that I do not intend to hold you here forever."

"You said you would release me when I was _ready,_ " Tsuzuki recalled, watching the other carefully. "I wasn't sure I believed you. Given our past together, I thought you'd want to keep me to yourself as long as you could. Trap me in some sort of sadomasochistic fantasy of yours." That earned him a sardonic smile, if only for a beat. "But . . ."

When the rest was not forthcoming: "But?"

"Everything you've done so far has made it seem as though you were preparing me for something else. Like you're trying to unlock something within me."

A raised brow. Muraki seemed impressed.

But Tsuzuki wasn't. "It isn't going to work. If Enma couldn't do it in seventy-five years—"

"But I am not as patient as Enma. I don't have an eternity to get what I want."

"Maybe the Tsuzuki you want doesn't exist. Did you ever think of that?"

Muraki chuckled. "Oh, he exists. I've seen him with my own eyes. He's just very good at staying hidden."

And suddenly Tsuzuki didn't like the way the doctor's eyes were boring into him, or what unsettling thoughts might be turning behind them—thoughts about Tsuzuki's own nature, and about those things of which he was most deeply ashamed. He turned his face quickly away.

"When I release you," Muraki confessed, "and you go running back to your friends in the Judgment Bureau, as I am certain you will do, the powers that be will want to make sure what's coming back to them is not some sort of Trojan horse. They will restrain you."

"What if I don't go back there?" Tsuzuki said, trying to sound more defiant than he actually felt. "What if I go to Hell instead? You yourself keep reminding me Ukyou's there because of me. What if the first thing I do when I get out of here is try to save her?"

But Muraki shook his head, smiling. "You won't go to Hell."

"I could—"

"But you won't. I know you well enough to know that, Tsuzuki. I know how just the thought of that place terrifies you. You know what's waiting for you there. That other Tsuzuki you insist doesn't exist knows what awaits you there, and that's why you will do whatever it takes to avoid that place. Even if Ukyou should rot in it."

Tsuzuki refused to admit aloud that he was right, so he didn't. "Then why do you keep bringing her up, if you know that I won't try to save her?"

But it seemed he already knew the answer to that, and Muraki knew he knew the answer to that, so the doctor did not see it as worth the breath it took to voice it.

"Alright. So, let's suppose I do go back to Meifu. Why would they have me locked up?"

"To assess whether what's returned to them is a ticking time bomb, naturally." An intimate tone came into Muraki's voice as he came to stand in front of Tsuzuki, a sympathetic one even—if that man was even capable of sympathy. "They'd be fools not to take the necessary precautions. They will throw everything at their disposal at you, testing you, to see if you've remained loyal to them while in my custody."

"Try as hard as you like, I'm not going to turn traitor—Ow!"

Tsuzuki hissed as, quick as a striking viper, Muraki slashed out at him with a hidden blade. When he examined the cut to the side of his neck with his fingers, he was relieved to feel it was shallow, and not even close to any major arteries. Certainly not a debilitating blow. And if he knew anything about Muraki by now, it was that that man rarely did anything that didn't have a point. "The hell was that for?" Tsuzuki began.

But before he could even finish, he felt a curious tingling, burning sensation around the cut. The last syllables of his question felt muddled in his mouth, his throat and tongue fighting against him, as though he were going into a seizure. He had felt this before. . . .

To confirm his suspicions, Muraki revealed his hand. Or rather, the shuriken needle that he had concealed there. Tsuzuki recognized it as having belonged to one of his colleagues, standard Peacekeeping issue. Doubtless the very one he had had stuck into his back the night he was brought here.

"A curious weapon," Muraki said, as he watched the knowledge of what was to happen to him dawn on Tsuzuki's face. "I wasn't sure the poison it was laced with would still work, but it appears to be coated in a way that ensures its viability over multiple uses. Practical. Though I must say, I am amazed that an agent of Enma would risk having a substance that can stop a shinigami so quickly in his tracks so close to their own person."

Tsuzuki willed his heart to slow from its gallop, but it was no use. It just spread the burning poison faster through his system. An epithet was on his lips, but he couldn't get it out. And when he tried to take a step toward Muraki, to take a swing at him, his arms felt like lead weights, and his knees and feet betrayed him.

Muraki was there to catch his fall, his arms going around Tsuzuki's waist in what seemed to Tsuzuki some grotesque parody of a dance hold. "I did say they will use everything in their power to restrain you." To his credit, Muraki almost sounded genuinely apologetic. "Every tool in their arsenal, even this one. Especially this one. You cannot let it stop you. You must learn to defeat even this."

 _But how?_ The task seemed impossible.

The question must have been written across his face. "Through practice. And repetition. Until you get it right."

* * *

Inside his floating world, in the courtyard of the Kokakurou, was one matter. But outside, the time for the cherry blossoms came and went, and he still he heard no word.

Remembrances of things past, even unpleasant things, had somehow evolved into spring being the time for reconnection. Oriya often wondered if it wasn't cruel, to ask her to sit with him beneath that reminder of a night she would rather forget, or if somehow the female psyche was so much stronger than the male. Why Ukyou would want to see him at that time, and be reminded, was beyond his ability to understand.

Then again, he thought, perhaps she needed to share the springtime with him precisely because it was the time she felt most vulnerable. Like clapping away wicked spirits, or filling up the darkest time of the year with light and laughter. She needed to see him when the cherry blossoms came out, to remember she was strong.

Which made her gift to him, the everblooming cherry tree in his courtyard, seem like a mean joke.

It was her way of challenging herself, he knew. But more: Everyone saw the flowers as beautiful. Everyone except she. It was as if she had told him _Here, take these_ so that she never had to burden herself with them again. She let him see the boughs in bloom all year round, as if in forcing him to do so, she might exorcise herself of their power over her.

Until she came to visit him again.

The flowers reminded her of Kazutaka, too. She had confessed as much to Oriya on one of her visits, and he had confessed that he felt the same way. Flower-viewings on his veranda were bittersweet when conversation turned to Muraki. Was it three years now or four since he had passed? Too long to hope that he might have faked his death and was still out there somewhere. But at times like those, they needed each other's strength. Each had lost the love of his or her life, and the most tenacious enemy of their soul. They needed their hope, their reason to go on, and, if they could not have that, their mutual grief.

Only this year he had heard nothing. There was the obligatory card at New Year, the call Christmas Eve, but since then . . . silence.

He gave Ukyou her space. She was not a person to hurry, or crowd. But when the rhododendrons began to burst into bloom, and then the first of the irises, and still he had not heard a word, he began to worry. Then word reached him that Kaede had died overseas—of a heart attack, it was said, though at her age and given how she looked after herself he had his doubts—and his worry turned to dread.

And when he tried to call, and every number he had of Ukyou's was either unavailable or just keep on ringing, Oriya could bear it no longer. He arranged a trip to Tokyo.


	16. Push through

Sometimes Ukyou could almost make herself forget where she was, or the circumstances that had landed her here. Lost in a dream of back home, or an engrossing book that took her mind somewhere else entirely, she could almost delude herself that the last several months had never happened.

But then she stood to get herself a drink of water, and the child growing inside her decided to give a sudden sharp kick.

It took her so aback that a little cry escaped her before she could stifle it, and she bent over, bracing herself against the wall until the discomfort passed.

It was too much to hope her trouble had gone unnoticed. "What's wrong?" On the other side of the privacy curtain, she heard Keijou put down his own book. Though mentally she begged him to stay right where he was, he rushed to her side anyway. "Are you hurt? Should I call for help?"

"It's nothing, just leave me alone," Ukyou tried breathlessly to wave him away. But he refused to listen. And as he reached for her to support her, despite her shying away, his hand brushed across her belly.

So far she had been successful at hiding it from him, asking Focalor to bring her increasingly looser clothes when he came to check on her. She had been fine so long as Keijou kept his distance. But she felt the shinigami go still beside her, then withdraw his hand like he'd been burned, and she knew. Any chance she might go on hiding this from him had just flown out the narrow, almost nonexistent window.

"You're pregnant." A thousand thoughts must have been racing through Keijou's mind, as a thousand fears were Ukyou's. He said, with a sudden anger that frightened her, "And you've been keeping this a secret from me the whole time? You _have_ been pregnant this whole time, haven't you?"

Eager to put some distance between the two of them, Ukyou slid along the wall to her right. "It happened before they brought me here. It's bad enough that it happened in the first place, I didn't want you to know."

"You didn't think that was maybe some information I should have? _That's_ why they wanted me to guard you, isn't it? I'm not just protecting you, I'm protecting that child!"

"Please, don't raise your voice." It was bad enough that he was in such a temper. As if all of this were her fault, let alone her choice, her wish.

Finally her fear of him and his outburst must have sunk in. Keijou sobered, and the kindness returned to his eyes, if not to the edge in his voice.

"I'm sorry." But his teeth were still gritted. "It's not you I'm angry with. It's just, Hell is no place for a pregnant woman—"

"Tell me something I don't already know."

"And you're sure it wasn't some demon that put it in you?"

Sure? Since learning what Tsuzuki was—or, perhaps it was fairer to say, what he wasn't—Ukyou wasn't sure of anything. But at least she knew it was no resident of Hell that was the father. She shook her head in answer to Keijou. "But they want it," she said, wrapping her cardigan sweater tighter around herself, as though that might offer some protection from the forces outside her cell. "I know that much. That's why they brought me here. To make sure they get the child when it's born. And . . . that I do give birth to it."

She couldn't be sure how much Keijou read from her words. Had Focalor told him that she had tried to kill the fetus? She would have been ashamed of him learning that, once upon a time—a few minutes ago, even—but despair and defiance had a way of making her numb to pride. She wouldn't have cared what this man thought of her and her decisions, if she didn't still have several months of his company to look forward to enduring.

Keijou ran a hand through his hair and let out a long sigh as he crossed to the other side of the room, a muttered _Enma-daioh_ on his lips. Funny how men seemed to react to the news of pregnancy as if _they_ were somehow the victims in need of sympathy. You think this is _your_ nightmare, Ukyou wanted to say to him, then what about _me_? How do you think _I_ feel? But would it have done either one of them any good?

Keijou sat heavily in his chair, and stared through the books scattered across the table. Finally: "Who's the father?"

"I don't see what business that is of yours," Ukyou shot back.

"That Muraki guy, is that it? That his kid?"

A rebuttal was on the tip of Ukyou's tongue, but she bit down on it. Let him take her silence for an affirmative, if it meant she didn't have to talk about it anymore.

"You guys were close, weren't you? That's why we found him at your house."

"Once," Ukyou ventured to say. "We were close _once_. We were engaged to be married. Still are, technically."

"No shit?"

"Not that it counted for anything. We'd been engaged since we were in college. Before that, our fathers got together and decided it would be good to unite our families. That was, until my father decided he could no longer work with Kazutaka's. Too damaging to his reputation. But by then, Kazutaka and I were already good friends."

Why am I sharing all this, Ukyou thought, chastening herself. But she knew why. Even if she still hadn't warmed up to Keijou, he was the only other soul she had to talk to. Other than Focalor, but he only ever seemed interested in whether she was healthy, and still alive—and he was a devil, besides, hardly confidante material. If nothing else, at least Keijou was human, or had been once.

"You mean you actually cared about that psychopath?" he said, more curious than disbelieving.

Ukyou clenched her teeth. "I didn't know him the way you shinigami seem to know him. Oh, I know what he's capable of, I've got a good idea of the things he's done. I'm not deluding myself as to what kind of person he is. Only. . . . You have to understand that he was never that person around me. The Kazutaka I knew was truly a kind soul, deep down, someone with a strong sense of right and wrong, and a calling to heal. He just couldn't help punishing people who hurt others, he felt compelled to take justice into his own hands, and he hated himself for that."

She wasn't expecting Keijou's snort. "You really believe that bullshit?"

"Sorry?"

"That he hated himself for being such a bastard. You really believe he didn't just revel in it? 'Cause my colleagues and I had to tidy up after more than a few of his messes, and I gotta tell ya, I didn't see anything to ever indicate to me that Muraki possessed anything approaching a guilty conscience."

Ukyou felt her face grow hot. She couldn't deny the things the Kazutaka had done, but how could she let Keijou go on accusing him either? "You don't understand. You didn't know him like I did—"

"So you keep saying, but it's not like you've provided me with any evidence this noble side of him actually existed like you claim it did." But Keijou must have reminded himself that it wasn't very gentlemanly behavior to argue with a pregnant woman, let alone about her child's supposed father, and made an effort to be nicer.

"It's like this guy I used to work with," he said in a much more amicable tone. "Or, rather, we worked in separate departments, but sometimes our jobs overlapped. He worked in Summons—you know, bringing the souls of people who refused to die in for judgment—and one of the people whose life he was charged with ending just happened to be my partner."

Ukyou wasn't sure where Keijou was planning to go with this line of discussion, but if she heard him out, that just meant she didn't have to try to find something to say to fill the silence.

"She died quite a while before I did," he went on, "back in the nineteen-forties. As a kid, her parents had dropped her off at this leper colony, figuring a life of prayer and being around people with the same condition as her might do her some good. It was a rough life—back in those days, they believed you must have done something in your past life or deep down in your soul to deserve having a disease like leprosy—but she made the most of it, devoting her life to God and helping others, like her, whose families had given up on them. Took the veil, even. During the last years of the war, when rationing got really bad, she often went hungry so others could eat. A noble thing to do, maybe, but it was killing her. Still, somehow, the need to see others through that time kept her going after she should have died. That's when Summons got involved.

"The shinigami they sent—oh, everyone back home thought the sun shone out of his ass. You know the type, I'm sure, since you know Muraki. Has everyone fooled he's some sort of closet genius, can do no wrong, and that there's not a mean bone in his body. But once he got there, and saw she wasn't going to just let him take her soul back to Enma, he got angry. Lost his shit. Tried to take her soul against her will.

"When she ran, he chased her down," Keijou spat in disgust, "pinned her to the ground. And when she fought, because she was afraid for her safety and virtue, and justifiably, he made his partner join in. Holding her down while he beat her into submission. She told me she could feel him literally crushing the life out of her. Her ribs were shattered before she even died. She could feel herself drowning on her own blood before she gave up her spirit. She never forgot the pain and humiliation of it."

It was at that point that Keijou had to stop. Even if what he described had happened to another, it was another whom he must have cared deeply about to be affected by her pain as though it were his own. Ukyou's sympathies went out to him, but she was cautious. If what he said was true, no one deserved to be the victim of it. But she could not help feeling that his story had a moral to it, one she wouldn't like.

"She said she could never forget his face," Keijou finally resumed in a much more somber voice, "screaming down into hers, for as long as she existed. And the worst part was, after she died she had to see him constantly. Passing in the halls. Working the same cases. Always behaving like a professional. To this man who had violated her soul. Knowing there was no way she could ever ask for justice to be done for what happened to her."

"But if she was supposed to have died in the first place," Ukyou found herself saying, "wouldn't she have been able to avoid all that pain if she'd just surrendered and let the shinigami do what they were meant to do?"

"Would you have just surrendered if you'd been in her position?"

Keijou didn't say it to be cruel. Even if trying to imagine herself in his partner's place only took Ukyou back to the trauma of her own past, and the what-ifs about that night in the park that plagued her nightmares. She shook her head. If those young men had succeeded in doing to her what they'd intended, she wasn't sure she would have had the courage to fight, rather than just freeze up in terror, though she hoped she would have. For what little good fighting would have even done.

"It's beside the point, though," Keijou went on, "isn't it? Everyone saw this guy as kind and gentle, too much of a doofus to ever hurt a person intentionally. None of them saw the side of him that my partner did, the side that laughed when she tried to get him off her, like her struggling was a joke to him. What reason did they have to believe her when she said that's the kind of monster their paragon of virtue really was? None of them was there. No one else witnessed it, except his asshole partner, and it wasn't like he was gonna rat out his superior, was it?"

"But you believed her," Ukyou reminded him. "You took her word for it, because you trust her." _Just as I trusted Kazutaka, when he fed me his lies—if they were lies—; because I_ wanted _to believe them, whether they were true or not._ "That's what matters. Not what may have happened in the past, but the fact that she has someone to stand up for her now, someone to take her side. Someone like you."

That earned Ukyou a bitter laugh. "Yeah," Keijou said sadly. "I guess it would matter—if she was still around. If the last thing I saw before winding up in Hell wasn't my partner getting vaporized right before my eyes, by one of her killer's fuckin' guardian spirits."

He closed his eyes, and shook his head. To free himself of the memory, Ukyou wondered, or to hold on to it, as a memento of vengeance as yet unserved? Could she blame him one way or another?

"So, basically, he killed her all over again. Where's the justice in that? And you wanna know the ironic icing on the cake? Less than a year after she died, the whole sanatorium got razed to the ground in a firebomb raid. So, even if she'd never skipped meals, she probably would have died anyway."

Which was worse, a slow death by starvation, being dragged to the underworld kicking and screaming by creatures from a fairy tale? Or choking and burning to death in an inferno? It seemed clear to Ukyou that Keijou had arrived at his own opinion years ago. "Did you ever look for proof yourself, that what she said about this guy was true? She could have remembered it worse than it was because she was angry—and who could blame her for not wanting to die?"

Keijou shrugged. "I thought maybe you could help clear that up for me." And Ukyou felt her stomach sink, she had known something like this was coming when he said: "You let him into your house. I don't know what Tsuzuki was doing there that night, but I assume he didn't force his way in. At least, not at first. That isn't his style. He likes to turn on you _after_ he's gained your trust. What, did he lure you in with talk about the baby?"

Dread and relief both fought for primacy within Ukyou. _So he doesn't know!_ Suddenly she feared what Keijou might do, that he might forget whatever promises he had made to Focalor, if he found out, even suspected, that the child she carried was really Tsuzuki's. Given how much Keijou clearly hated the man. Would he try to harm it? It wasn't that possibility she feared so much as that he might try to harm her. She couldn't say anything that might hint at the truth. But how long could she go on pretending the baby was Kazutaka's?

"I don't remember," she said, trying to keep the frightened waver out of her voice. "In the time I knew him, he wasn't anything like your partner described. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what she had to go through, but the Tsuzuki I saw was only ever kind, and patient."

Keijou narrowed his eyes at her. "And just how long _did_ you know Tsuzuki?"

"Not long enough, apparently."

Ukyou held her breath, terrified she was stretching the truth so thin he would see right through it.

But her answer must have been vague enough. Keijou shrugged at it. He couldn't hope to win every battle, even if he still harbored some hope he might convert her to his point of view. "I guess he _would_ try to hide what he was really like from you, though. After all, you catch more flies with honey."

* * *

Hisoka woke to the wonderful aroma of fresh fish cooking over an open flame.

For sleeping on a bed of ferns, with a large horse for a pillow, he had slept remarkably well. Remarkably well by any measure, in fact—which was testament enough to how tired he must have been by the time their party stopped for the night. The three had found a tiny, abandoned hut in a sheltered spot in the woods; but the insides of it were so ramshackle, the little cleared patch outside the door actually made for a more appealing hearth and sleeping place than the moldy tatami and fire-hazard of a brazier inside.

He had had misgivings at first about curling up next to a strange horse—or, well, any horse, but a shikigami besides—but its warmth and the steady rise and fall of its breathing must have lulled him right to sleep. So much so that when he sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, he was surprised to find that Senrima was nowhere in sight. Nor did he see K, though that didn't mean much. K was very much her own person. In a manner of speaking.

Instead, seated on a log and flipping the fishes on their spit was "Kijin?"

The youth wore traveling clothes rather than the fine raiments Hisoka was used to seeing closer to court; but he was unmistakable in his usual shades of cool, oceanic blues and stormy grays. "What are you doing here? Where are the others?"

"Taking a walk," Kijin said, "to give us some privacy."

Needless to say, that left Hisoka with just as many questions as answers. What would they need privacy for? And how had Kijin found him, anyway?

The latter must have gone without saying, because Kijin said, "Did you think your arrival would not be noticed? Even if you did sneak into Gensoukai, I'm a seer, remember? I could see this moment approaching and knew I had to find you, and meet with you."

"Don't tell me. You came with a warning." And since whatever Kijin had to say had a tendency to come true, Hisoka wasn't sure he wanted to hear it.

"Take it as you will," said the boy, raising his palm in caution. "Warning or blessing. But I'm here to help you get what you came for."

"And you know what that is, huh?"

Kijin nodded. "And you won't find it in the Capital. So it would be best if you avoid that place altogether, and stay clear of my father's wrath." Every time Hisoka came to this world, it seemed it only pissed off Sohryuu more. He didn't even have to do anything half the time. Just show up. "There is a fortress outside of Tenkuu, in the mountains and high jungle to the south and west. Very difficult to reach, but not impossible for one who is properly motivated."

Hisoka eyed him warily. "What makes you so sure what I'm looking for is there?" He had never heard of the place.

"Because these days my father dares not imprison someone he views as a traitor and a powerful threat so close to his person." His cloudy eyes softened in sympathy when he said next: "Rikugou is being held in that fortress, for his sins against his master and Gensoukai."

"Well," Hisoka said as he made a show of checking the fish, "Tsuzuki was able to get Touda out of his supposedly impenetrable prison, no problems that I ever heard of."

"I'm afraid it may not be the getting out that's the hard part. Lord Kurosaki." There was something so grave, so candid in the way he said Hisoka's name—and Hisoka rather missed being called by his given name by Kijin in particular, whom he most saw like a peer in this world—that he had no choice but to meet the youth's eyes, even as he feared what prophecy might come out of Kijin's lips. "Do you remember when I was poised to wage war with Kurikara all over again, in my father's name, and you stepped in the way and challenged him for a second time—even after nearly being destroyed by his power? Perhaps you did not realize it at the time, perhaps it was furthest from your intentions, but you saved me that day from doing something I could not undo."

Hisoka remembered little after that, having never had a chance to finish that second test before being yanked out of the Imaginary World along with Tsuzuki. Konoe had called him in to inform him his parents had both died after a long illness, and that had supplanted any thoughts of returning to Gensoukai in Hisoka's mind for some time. "But the war went on anyway. Didn't it? The fighting continued after I left. Byakko told me about the attacks by Kurikara's army—"

"Yes, I'm afraid by that point the damage had already been done. Chaos had been given a gap through which to pour itself into our world once again, and we've been fighting it ever since."

"Chaos?" Why was this the first he was hearing of it? If there was some greater enemy controlling everything from behind the scenes, one that both armies could unite against—

Kijin must have understood the direction of his thoughts. He quickly shook his head. "Chaos isn't a being like you and I, if that's what you're thinking—though if any being comes close to embodying it, it's Touda. It is much more like a force. One that makes a strength out of weakness. That insidious little voice that whispers in your ear that all your worst fears are true, and the only way you'll ever have peace is if you fight. It can only exist where rational beings set themselves at odds with one another, the irony being that once they destroy each other, it will cease to be as well. But that does not stop it from spreading its lies, and pushing people to do what they ought to know they should not.

"It had me in its grip that day," Kijin confessed, head bowed, "and Kurikara as well. I suspect it's the same madness that afflicts Father now. But that day on the battlefield," the youth said with a fond smile on his lips, "only your courageous act was able to free me from its spell. I am still grateful to you for saving me, and I owe you a great debt, which I do not take lightly."

"It isn't really a big deal," began Hisoka, who didn't feel like it had had as much to do with courage as it did his bullheaded determination to gain Kurikara as his shiki. But Kijin would not let him finish.

"It is a bigger deal than I can impress on a human. Suffice it to say, I don't think the same mechanics are in play as in yours and Rikugou's case, but I felt something change within myself in that moment you released me from my own pride and fear. I would fight for you, Lord Kurosaki, I would give anything to protect you, if you called on my assistance."

"Wait." Kijin must have been speaking in riddles again, because Hisoka couldn't have heard that right. "Are you saying you're . . . Are you saying I won you, too?" It would be just his luck if he'd picked up such a powerful shiki on his first trip here and never known it.

Then it was Kijin's turn to blink in confusion, and blush. "What? Er, no, not quite like that. My bond with Tsuzuki is still firmly in place. Only that I think I understand what Rikugou meant when he tried to explain to me how tying himself to you was not a betrayal. I feel that in serving you and your interests, I _am_ serving Tsuzuki, so my nature is not in conflict. But it is different. Suffice it to say, in showing me the error of my ways, you conquered my soul, even if you did not capture it."

He said it with such a beatific smile on his face that Hisoka could almost forget how violent that sounded. As though he had enslaved Kijin in some way, or was exploiting him. Why it should suddenly bother him, he wasn't sure, seeing as he'd been so eager to do the same to other shiki all along. Only Kijin made him see the relationship between guardian gods and humans another way. "Conquered?" Hisoka said in a small voice. "That's a strong word."

"It was a strong thing you did—at great peril to yourself. I could have destroyed you, had I reacted emotionally to your interference and unleashed my full power upon you."

"Seems to be the story of my life in this place."

"Indeed. The tengu have told me how you saved one of them from what should have been a fatal injury. You yourself should have died at Kurikara's sword. It would have easily slain even the strongest human soul. And yet," that Buddha smile again, "here you are. I cannot help but wonder if you are protected. But by Fate, some distant angel, or an even greater power, I can only guess. And I can only guess what its motive may be."

That's right, Hisoka reminded himself, the people here seemed to believe that the future, to some extent, was already decided. Rikugou and Kijin certainly had a sense of what was in store, though their knowledge came from different sources. Yet Hisoka felt, even still, as though he were wandering in the dark. "Can you see anything related to my task?" he asked Kijin.

"Are you sure you want to hear it?"

"I don't suppose it's too much to ask for you to only tell me if you foresee something good?" But Hisoka was tired of going into everything blind. He needed every advantage he could find. Even if it was bad news, it might help to know ahead of time. To know what to expect. "I'm not sure if I want to hear it, but I think maybe I need to."

Kijin closed his eyes and thought on that a moment. When he opened them again, something had changed in them. As though he were looking into some hidden dimension. "Shooting stars streak the sky in day. And in the darkness, stone shifts, falling—and rising, in equal measure. The higher you climb, the stronger it will pull you down." Just like that, though, the queer light seemed to leave his eyes. "But that is only the beginning. Inside those walls I cannot see. It must be Rikugou's interference blocking my vision. He is much more a master of time than I. But you can count on being tested."

But having been tested by that particular master of time before, Hisoka doubted whatever games Rikugou's jailers had in store for him this time around could be so difficult.

"Do I hear our Sleeping Beauty up and awake?"

Rather than a horse, the Senrima that appeared out of the brush with K riding on her shoulders was in human form. A woman in her thirties with the powerful build of a wrestler, a deep tan, and an intricately braided faux-hawk that fell down over one shoulder like a horse's mane. She wore Mongolian riding trousers and boots, the latter embroidered with little stylized wings over the ankles, but just a simple chemise in the humid morning air, which showed off the outline of six-pack abs.

She nodded a greeting to them both. "Sorry if we're interrupting, young Master Kijin, but the smell of breakfast was making our tummies rumble. My salutations."

"And mine as well." Kijin nodded back. "It has been too long since you've graced us with your presence in the Capital, Senrima."

With that, he stood, and brushed off his tunic.

"Stay for breakfast?" Hisoka asked him, but Kijin waved off his invitation. "I should be getting back before my father's retainers grow too suspicious of my whereabouts. I would not want to lead them to you before you've done what you came to do. But you should remember my words, Hisoka." It seemed to take him a greater effort to use Hisoka's given name than it had when he first arrived, when everyone had just copied Tsuzuki's form of addressing him. Still, the meaning of it was not lost on Hisoka.

With a parting wave exchanged with Senrima, the young man disappeared in the direction she had come. Senrima grabbed one of the skewered fish off the spit, sat down and, after plucking half of it off for K, tucked in.

"Aren't you a vegetarian?" Hisoka asked.

"Because I'm a horse, you mean." She snorted. "Beggars can't really afford to be choosers out here, can they? Though I can't say I wouldn't give my right hoof for a box of apples from Tenkuu's gardens. Fruit always grows sweetest in the Capital. Maybe it's something in the water. I do credit your Rikugou for some of that, too. The man is a ray of sunshine—literally."

It seemed like there was a story there. "Why did you ever leave, then?"

Senrima ruminated on that as she picked bones out of a bite of fish. "A difference of opinions, I suppose. I have always believed our reason for existence was to act as helpmeets to humanity. But then the war came, pitting one extreme against another, the Emperor disappeared, and everyone seemed to have their own idea about what we were supposed to be. I loved the Capital—I still do—but at some point it began to feel less like a home and more like a place to visit. And, of course, more recently, the wormholes started showing up."

Hisoka had an inkling of where she might be going with that. He remembered how Sohryuu, even having never met Hisoka before, even knowing of his dearness to Tsuzuki, had already pegged Hisoka as the source of his troubles. "Let me guess. Does a flowering wind have anything to do with it?"

A scowl passed over Senrima's features. "The downside to being trapped in this world," she said, "and dependent on those outside of it, is that after a while the isolation starts to change a person. They cling all the tighter to the old ways, and hate anything that may be construed as change, when in fact _they_ are the ones changing without realizing it. Retreating inside themselves—reducing, in fact, to some exaggerated version of themselves.

"Don't get me wrong: The wormholes pose a significant threat to the stability of this world. They deserve to be feared, within reason. But it is how we react to a threat that defines us, and Sohryuu clings all the tighter to the past the more our world changes. Which wouldn't necessarily be bad if he weren't a leader of so many."

Hisoka had been given a sense of that opinion the last time he was here, though Byakko had been far more cryptic in his way of expressing the same concern. Which was only natural. Byakko would have found it disloyal, either to Sohryuu or Tsuzuki, to be as frank as Senrima was being. And Rikugou had made it sound as though it were some madness that afflicted Sohryuu's mind, some disease. Kijin named it Chaos. Perhaps neither of them was so far off the mark. Doubt and fear held a powerful sway over a person's mind, and could make a hell of even this heaven.

"I bear him no ill will for the path he's chosen," Senrima clarified, "but I cannot follow it, and I cannot condone it by association. All the more in the middle of a ridiculous war in which I refuse to choose sides. I have always favored the Emperor _and_ human progress equally, but this war isn't even about ideology, and to fight our own brothers and sisters over old grudges is a pointless waste. I had to get away, and see if I could discover an answer to the wormhole mystery on my own. Maybe in that way I could make a meaningful, and peaceful, difference."

"I don't suppose the cure for whatever's wrong with Sohryuu is to just get out more often," Hisoka said as he picked at his own breakfast.

Senrima didn't laugh, however, and anyway, it hadn't been a joke. "By most accounts, his power is as great as ever. But there are other factors that can lead a guardian further into instability."

"Like an absent master, you mean."

"Mmm. Neglect is a heinous weapon. It's destroyed more powerful denizens of the Imaginary World than even the great Blue Dragon. We were created by humans, after all. In the beginning. Even if some of us deny it, and swear on our autonomy, we all still require a reason to be."

They finished their breakfasts in silence with that dark thought hanging over them. Afterwards, while Senrima doused the fire and cleaned up, and K gave herself a quick bath, Hisoka scrounged around the little hut for supplies for their journey to Rikugou's prison. As he was doing so, his eyes alit on a bow, hanging from a hook above the brazier, where last night there had been nothing.

He took it down, and tested its size and tension. The bow seemed to have been built for someone a little taller than Hisoka, or at least with slightly longer arms, but otherwise it was comfortable, and well made despite the crudeness of its surroundings. He found a quiver of arrows nearby, and decided to take them both with him. If there were obstacles between him and Rikugou, as Kijin had warned, he ought to arm himself accordingly. It was foolish of him not to have brought a weapon, now that he thought on it. But if there was some truth to the existence of Fate, Hisoka was grateful it placed the bow and arrows in this hut where he might find them.

And if someone a bit more physical had placed them there while he was still sleeping, he thanked them too.

He took his new weapons out around the back of the hut to get a better feel for them. His arms were getting stronger every day of recovery, but they still trembled some when he pulled the bow as taut as he could. He would just have to work harder to overcome that weakness. He couldn't afford it, considering what challenges still lay ahead of him. He willed his muscles and his mind to calm as he relaxed his pose. Pulling the string back again, he loosed the arrow before his arm could begin to shake.

The arrow lodged square in the center of the tree trunk he had been aiming at. Maybe his skill was returning with his strength, or maybe he had lucked out on that shot. Either way, maybe it was time he start trusting in himself again. Though that would be a lot easier once he had spoken with Rikugou, and got some answers as to where everything between them had gone wrong.

Hisoka went to retrieve the arrow. And as he did so, a faint but curious sound in the brush caught his ears. It wasn't like the sound of an animal passing in the undergrowth—if anything, there was a queer absence of the usual noises of snuffling and disturbed leaf litter. It was more musical, but utterly natural at the same time, like the tinkling of a chime in the breeze. Or, perhaps, what the sparkling of light on the surface of a river would sound like, if it were able to produce a sound.

As silently as he was able, Hisoka moved toward it. Heart hammering, his grip on the bow was tight, instinct telling him to prepare to encounter some threat at the source of that sound; and yet he was struck by a strong wave of peace the nearer he came to it. A form moved between the trees ahead of him. Hisoka went still, crouching down. Stared in disbelief as the thing crept nearer, and finally, even brazenly, showed itself.

Staring back at him was a creature the likes of which simply didn't exist in any real-world zoo or wildlife park. It looked like a deer in some respects, with delicate hoofed feet and a single, branching antler, but had the tail and mane of a lion, and the graceful but fierce, bewhiskered face of a dragon. The combination should have made for an inordinately ugly creature, but Hisoka would have sworn in that moment it was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen—almost too beautiful to bear. Instead of fur, it was covered in scales, which shimmered like gold mail yet appeared even from that distance to be so feathery soft that Hisoka longed to reach out and touch them. All around it shimmered a fiery light, though no foliage burned where it stepped. Even in that world that had such impossible things as dragons and phoenixes and flying horses in it, it seemed like an alien creature, terrifying in its unknowability; yet as it stared at him, Hisoka thought he felt some presence touch his mind, with a peace and reassurance that was almost as awe-inspiring in its depth and purity and otherness as the great swelling of power he could feel in the thing.

"You know what it is, don't you?"

Hisoka started as he heard Senrima's whisper beside him. He blinked once, automatically, and the creature was gone. Funny, it didn't seem like there was any reason for it, but he felt like crying to see it had disappeared, and blaming Senrima for it, though it probably wasn't her fault. He just wanted that feeling back so badly, that feeling of supreme peace and reassurance that all was right in the world that he had felt in its presence. "You saw it too?" She must have, otherwise she wouldn't have asked. Only suddenly Hisoka couldn't be sure he hadn't just imagined the whole thing.

Senrima nodded, gravely. "It's been many years since kirin have been spotted in this world. Thousands of years, in fact. They disappeared when the Emperor went away. Some say it was the fighting that drove them away, that they found some other dimension to hide themselves in. Others, that their grief drove them to extinction."

They were clearly not extinct, though. "It's an omen." Hisoka could not have said what made him so certain of that. Maybe something he was picking up from Senrima or her words. Maybe everything else that seemed to ever happen around him in this place.

Senrima seemed shocked at him, however. "Yes—but a good one! The legends all say that the kirin's return would herald the return of the Emperor."

"But didn't he die a long time ago? When he gave his powers to Sohryuu?" And would his return really be a good thing, if everyone here seemed to imply that he was part of the reason for the civil war that nearly destroyed this world the last time? Wasn't it in his name that they were still fighting now?

Senrima shook her head, but Hisoka found it impossible to guess her meaning from it. She shrugged deeper into her jacket. "Sohryuu should hear of this. He would _want_ to know of this. Only there's no time to tell him at present, nor any way I can see of informing him that would not also put you and your mission in danger. If he would even believe us. . . ."

She glanced down at the bow in his hands, and smiled. "Now, if you've had enough fresh air and exercise, would you mind helping us secure a few saddlebags so we can be on our way? You do realize once I transform, you will possess all the opposable thumbs in our party."

* * *

It didn't strike Tatsumi as particularly curious when Natsume failed to show up to work that morning. He still had his old desk and colleagues in the basement, after all, and on slow work days would spend part of his time there.

But when the day dragged on and Kurosaki still hadn't arrived, that was when Tatsumi really began to get suspicious. The chief was no help in the matter, and those shinigami who were not out on assignment that day just shook their heads when Tatsumi asked if they had seen either of the two. When he tried contacting them, Natsume's cell just rang and rang. Kurosaki's went straight to voicemail.

Frustration growing by the moment, Tatsumi sent passive-aggressive emails to both. For now, his professional pride got the best of his temper, but there was a niggling worry in the back of his mind any time something like this happened now. This was how innocently Tsuzuki's disappearance had started, too.

When he asked Watari if he had seen either of the missing agents, the answer he got didn't bode well. "Why? What's the kid done?"

His act of nonchalance was entirely transparent. Tatsumi bent over Watari's desk so he wouldn't be overheard: "Watari, if you know anything . . ."

"Nothing, I swear!" That, at least, was genuine. "Only, the last time I saw Hisoka he was complaining about some recurring nightmare keeping him up, and asked me if I could help him with that."

He hesitated to say anything more. Tatsumi had to prompt him—a tad sternly: "What exactly did you do to help?"

"I just gave him some sleep aids—but he knows, Tatsumi." The confession, once started, came out of him all in a rush. "He knows what we saw—I was careful, I swear, but he must have figured out I was keeping something back and he—I couldn't stop him, he grabbed me and then he was in my mind before I knew what to do about it, and I tried but I couldn't think of anything else—"

It was all Tatsumi could do to lead him to some place away from the prying ears and eyes of others before he growled through his teeth: " _What,_ exactly, does Kurosaki know?"

Watari took a deep breath. "He saw what I saw the night we brought him to the infirmary. The weird eyes, the scales—but, Tatsumi, he ran out of there before I could even try to explain. I don't know how much he put together, but the way he was talking about his dream and his family, I don't think he ever knew the yatonokami was real. Or, even if he does believe the legend, I doubt he knew that it was still alive, and living in that house with him the whole time he was growing up, right under his nose."

"I suppose we can only hope it stays that way," Tatsumi said as much to Watari as himself.

"Yeah, but what if he comes demanding answers now? What do I do then, huh? Cos I don't know if I can keep lying to the kid, about his family, about what he is—"

"We don't actually know what he is," Tatsumi said, giving the other a hard look.

Watari blinked. "Maybe not for certain, that's true, but I think you and I have a pretty good hunch. And after having Hisoka in my head—you know, he might have seen what I saw, but I felt some of what he was feeling looking at it, too. The anger he had in him, knowing we were keeping this back from him, the betrayal. . . . Can't exactly say I'd blame him, either, if it was me. The kid has a right to know what he is, Tatsumi."

But Tatsumi shook his head. "I disagree. And more importantly, so does the chief—"

"But this is about his most basic sense of his own identity!"

"That's precisely why it was so important that he never know what we saw!"

The accusation in Tatsumi's tone made Watari recoil a step, but Tatsumi was not sorry for it. His colleague should have been more careful protecting this information. He should have taken greater steps to safeguard his own mind. And as far as Tatsumi was concerned, Watari should not have needed Tatsumi to tell him so. "I don't need to remind you what trouble Tsuzuki's doubting his own humanity has cost this department. His little existential crisis has touched everyone here at one point or another, none for the better. And if we ever see him again, we have no idea what state he will come back to us in. Will it be the Tsuzuki who believes he's human, or the demon? The last thing we need is for Kurosaki to be put through the same wringer."

"And I suppose Chief Konoe would echo that reasoning?" Watari said, crossing his arms.

Tatsumi nodded gravely, earning a snort of disbelief from the other. "If Tsuzuki ever does come back here—and right now that's a big 'if'—we're going to need Kurosaki to be at his most focused, his most confident."

"You think we're gonna need the kid to talk Tsuzuki down?"

After being so long in Muraki's influence? Yes, that was precisely what Tatsumi and the chief suspected. "All I know is, it won't help matters any if Kurosaki is too worried about whether or not he's human himself. And furthermore, we have our orders. No matter how much we may feel for Kurosaki and his situation, we must not exacerbate his sense of crisis."

"So, I'm being ordered to keep my big mouth shut," Watari said through his teeth, "is that what you're saying?" Nor did Tatsumi enjoy being the target of his displeasure, of all people's, but this time sacrificing a bit of amicability was a small price to pay if it kept the department together. "Damn it, Tatsumi, you could have told me—"

"I was going to. I didn't think you would volunteer that information to Kurosaki. I thought you and I were already on the same page on this—I thought—" Tatsumi sighed. If he were truthful, "I thought I had more time."

Watari stared at him long and cold. "I understand, I really do. You have to believe me when I say I didn't intend for Hisoka to read me." His tone, however, was far from conciliatory. "But now that the suggestion has been put in his mind, it's not like we can take it back. What the kid needs now is context, before he does something stupid trying to figure out who he is on his own, like running off to Gensoukai again or something."

"What, did he try to get you to sneak him in, too?"

The two men turned at the sudden interjection, unsettled to think they had had an eavesdropper the whole time. That worry must have been clear on their faces, because Kannuki backpedalled: "Er, I was just passing by and couldn't help overhearing you mention Gensoukai and Hisoka."

Watari exchanged a glance with him, and Tatsumi said, "Why did you ask if Kurosaki was trying to get Watari to sneak him in _'too'_?"

"Because he came and visited me in Takehara about doing just that," said Kannuki. "I told him there was no way I was going to help him do it. Not that I wouldn't love a chance to stick it to Todoroki, but I don't have any desire to get disciplined for doing something I probably shouldn't be doing anyway." And she stuck her hands on her hips. "After what happened the last time, I figured I'd just be enabling Hisoka if I gave in to his demands. Besides, he seemed too worked up about Tsuzuki to be making any trips into Gensoukai right now. A person needs to have their wits about them for that."

Tatsumi wasn't about to tell her that he didn't think it was Tsuzuki's absence that was weighing so heavily on Kurosaki's mind at the moment. Beside him, Watari swallowed and lowered his guilty gaze to the floor between them.

And if Tatsumi knew Kurosaki at all, he had his suspicions about where the boy had gone and what he planned to do. How he might have accomplished it was of less importance at the moment. The thought that he might be correct only filled Tatsumi with dread.

But first things first: He had to locate Natsume.

* * *

They had been up in the air for hours, and in that time Hisoka had seen no structures resembling a fortress. In fact, the forest was getting so thick and the hills steeper and closer together, he couldn't see any signs of settlement whatsoever.

"You're sure we're going in the right direction?" he shouted to Senrima over the wind.

"Kijin said it was in the mountains southwest of the Capital, didn't he?" she said back, her voice rumbling beneath him. "I remember seeing an old complex in these parts. Wasn't sure it was a fort, though, but looks can be deceiving."

"There is nothing out here."

That uttered mainly to himself in frustration, but the other two heard. "Trust me, it's here," said the horse, repressing an urge to toss her head at his lack of faith. Clinging to the roots of her mane between Hisoka's knees, K craned her neck to do her part and scan the hillsides for any sign of buildings. It was a thoughtful effort, but Hisoka didn't see what good it would do, since cats were supposed to be nearsighted.

It would have been nice if the stony peaks in this area didn't naturally cleave in such a way they looked carved. Anyone who said nature doesn't make straight lines needed to go back to school, as far as he was concerned. There were a couple of peaks that got Hisoka's pulse racing, believing they were close, that on closer inspection turned out to be, simply, mountains.

Until— "Wait a second. Am I imagining things, or does that look artificial?"

"You're not imagining it. I see it too." Senrima swooped lower and slowed, circling the peak in question to get a better look. "It's a little more overgrown than I remember from the last time I passed by here, but that's definitely the place."

Overgrown was an understatement. It did in fact look like the jagged peak had been carved down into symmetrical, intricately decorated stupa-like towers, but the place was ancient, doubtless at least a few thousand years old judging by the erosion. And the massive vines and roots that squeezed it like the arms of an octopus must have been growing there for centuries. "How can you tell," he asked her, "if it's so overgrown?"

At which Senrima snorted. "Child, that's _precisely_ how I know we've found the right place." When Hisoka didn't seem to be following, she added under her breath. "Clearly someone went through some trouble to make sure it wouldn't be easy to find."

A way into the structure was proving just as difficult to locate. At one point, an impressive staircase, with carved balustrades and delicate arches spanning deep gullies, had led from the forest floor up to the entrance, but most of the crucial part up near the top had fallen away in a landslide. There looked to be a little strip of doorstep left in front of a crumbling gopura, and that Senrima and Hisoka decided would be their landing pad.

The fortress, however, had other plans. And Hisoka should have known their approach had been too easy to last.

At their approach, a swarm of what looked like cave swallows came pouring out of their hiding places among the gopura's carvings. It was too much to hope that was all they were, and that they had merely been frightened from their lair. Instead of fleeing from Senrima and her riders, they flew right for her; and their wings more than just _looked_ sharp, cutting the horse's flanks and Hisoka's arms and cheek as they zoomed past. Even K attempted just one swipe at the things before deciding it would be safer to hunker down behind her guardian and wait the attack out.

And they weren't swallows, either—even though they were screeching like them—but tiny women. Tiny feathered women with electricity in their clawed hands and serrated teeth. That Hisoka discovered with horror as one got a little too close, latching onto his arm and trying to chew through his shirt. That one K did swat off, with great pleasure.

"Hold on!" Senrima shouted to him over the screeching of the winged women, as she descended rapidly. "I'm going to set you two down right away, see if I can't keep these things off you!"

The place she chose wasn't ideal, a piece of the stairway disconnected from the main complex, but in light of current circumstances, it seemed the best Hisoka and K were going to get. When K didn't hesitate to leap down, Hisoka followed her, making sure he had his bow and quiver over his shoulder. "What about you?"

"Don't wait up for me," the horse said, bounding off just as soon as she had landed, with a boom like thunder. "Just find a way inside that fortress!"

Hisoka didn't complain—seeing as how Senrima had given herself the poorer end of the deal—but that was going to be easier said than done. The platform where she had landed them was little more than a pillar of stone sticking up out of a chasm, the stairs connecting it on either side long ago crumbled away. And now did one get a sense of the true height and sheer sides of the fortress and its mountain, a sense that Hisoka didn't quite get looking down from the air. The nearest stupa still towered like a skyscraper above him, and below, the forest was largely concealed in mist. A thread of waterfall poured from some opening higher up the mountainside, dissipating into vapor long before it could reach the tops of the trees below.

If not for the massive roots and vines of the trees that had grown up around the place, Hisoka wasn't sure he would know where to go next. But K seemed to think those roots and vines were the way in, and Hisoka was inclined to agree with her, relying on his powers of flight to help him leap from one to the next, and keep from falling into the abyss. Keeping an eye out for those miniature harpies along the way, though so far they seemed completely preoccupied with Senrima, trailing after her like a stream of bullets after a fighter plane as she galloped through the sky.

Maybe it was the elevation making it harder to breathe, but the higher Hisoka went, it seemed the more gravity weighed him down, and the harder it was to muster any power of flight. Even K seemed to be having the same trouble, thinking twice before executing leaps that normally would have come as second nature to her.

It must have been something in the fortress itself, Hisoka thought. Kijin had warned him of just this phenomenon, and of stone. Rising up—like the mountain towering above him—and falling down—like the landslides that had already destroyed so much. What if there was something endemic to this place that made it the ideal location for a fortress prison, something buried deep inside the mountain, like a powerful magnet at its heart, or a black hole? It wasn't just Hisoka's muscles that felt exhausted the longer he climbed. His vision reeled, his sense of equilibrium being thrown off by . . . something. It seemed to resonate inside him rather than in the landscape, ever threatening to throw him off his balance and down into thin air.

But at last, with great effort, he and K reached the balcony beneath the gopura—or what was left of it—hauling themselves up the broken cliffside until they lay panting on the cool, slightly damp tiles. Hisoka's throat burned with thirst—and, unfortunately, what water they had brought with them would have been with Senrima or cast off into the forest below by now.

But at least the sense that he was fighting extra gravity seemed to have abated. For the meantime. Wiping the sweat from his brow, Hisoka pushed himself to his feet, and readied the bow and an arrow, just in case those mini-harpies weren't the only creatures guarding this place. Seeing that he was ready to continue on, K got up from where she was sprawled out catching her breath, and trotted after him.

It was refreshingly cool inside the galleried entrance, but the sunlight didn't make it far into the structure, the stone columns, braced by chimeric beasts carved out of the same mountain, casting long, dark shadows over the interior. At least K seemed to have no trouble, and after a short time, Hisoka's eyes adjusted somewhat to the dark, a benefit of being a shinigami. In fact, he couldn't help but feel like this was too easy. Though the bulging eyes of the statues did feel eerily like they were watching him, there was no one here—no living being that his empathy could detect. No sound, but the ever-present—and slightly worrying—sound of shifting, crumbling rock echoing from some distant place.

And there should have been _someone_ else here _._ Something other than those tiny harpies to guard this place from infiltration. Why would Sohryuu leave this place unprotected, if he was so intent on ensuring Rikugou stayed here?

The answer revealed itself soon enough in the sound of footsteps at Hisoka's back. He had thought it was merely settling rock, but it moved with the distinctive rhythm of a bipedal creature. He turned, just in time to see one of the very creatures he had thought were just statues, carved out of the native sandstone, raising a massive stone sword above its elephantine head, ready to bring it down on top of Hisoka with crushing force.

Before it could do so, however, a pissed-off animal scream split the air, and Senrima charged out of the shadows, taking a flying leap at the stone beast, all four hooves first. They connected with the force of a wrecking ball, knocking the stone beast backwards into a pillar and cracking it down the middle.

Senrima let out a huge sigh and transformed, hefting the statue's discarded sword onto her shoulder as she did so, with no more effort than if it were a normal-sized, steel one. And all this while ichor oozed from dozens of little cuts. "What was that thing?" Hisoka asked her.

"Temple guardian. Normally they guard against evil spirits, but they must have been programmed to view anything that comes in here as an invader."

That wasn't exactly what Hisoka had meant by his question. As he stared at the fallen statue, it seemed like a huge, bipedal lion with ram horns and an elephant's trunk attached to its snout—not to mention a dozen tusks that bristled out in all directions from a very large mouth. "Enough standing around," Senrima said, as though to pull him out of his stare. "There's bound to be more of those things. Get ready for a fight."

"With what?"

Senrima looked at him like he had made a bad joke. "You're armed, ain't ya?" she said, giving him a once-over.

Hisoka wanted to ask her what good a bow and arrows were going to do against giants made of stone, but another of the living statues came charging around a corner on three legs, roaring and getting ready to swat Hisoka flat with the fourth.

K leaped up onto its face, using the trunk like it was a scratch post, and laid into its eyes. The statue reared, trying to scratch her off, and while it was distracted, Hisoka didn't think. He took aim, loosing an arrow right into the beast's armpit. It was a purely instinctive move, should not have done a creature made of solid stone any damage; but to his surprise, a crack formed in the base of the arm, growing wider as the statue flailed.

In the midst of battle with her own opponent, Senrima saw—or heard—the arrow fly home, and chuckled. That was all the encouragement Hisoka needed. He nocked another, taking aim at the underside of the statue's jaw. His shot flew true, lodging beneath that mass of tusks; and with a little push from K, the statue's head slowly cleaved off its shoulders.

Hisoka almost laughed. It shouldn't have been possible to take down stone statues with arrows, but he was doing it. Even if his kill count was nowhere near what Senrima was racking up with her sword. He took aim at another that was charging between the pillars toward them, putting it down with a shot between the eyes. Had to dodge another that nearly sent him flying with a sweep of its trunk, and cracked it in half with a shot that, had it been a creature of flesh and blood, would have gone straight to the heart.

But their numbers were closing in faster than even Senrima could keep up. With a cry of frustration, she threw down her sword. Soon, the three would be overwhelmed. But before that could happen, she had just enough time to charge herself up to her full power, and slam her fist down into the mountain beneath their feet with all her strength.

Hisoka was shaken off his by the shockwave rippling through the tiles. Whatever Senrima had done, it had been violent enough he could feel his bones humming and rattling inside him.

But the effect was worse on the living statues. Not blessed with soft tissues to absorb the blow, their legs cracked and split beneath them and they tumbled over where they stood—alive still, trying to haul themselves back up with whatever limbs they had left, but momentarily halted in their tracks.

That was Senrima's cue to pick Hisoka up and put him back on his feet. "Come on!" She practically dragged him along with her. "We need to go now!"

The reason why became apparent a few seconds later. It wasn't just the statues Senrima had broken. The whole structure moved beneath their feet, the crack of splitting rock drowning out all other sound, and pieces of the ceiling began to rain down around them. Hisoka had no way of knowing how close they were to the next chamber, but he doubted they would make it there in time.

The same thought must have occurred to Senrima. As K dashed off ahead, she grabbed Hisoka tight and threw him over her shoulder, transforming herself back into a horse in mid-stride. Her breath sounded loud as a steam engine chugging away to Hisoka as he held onto her neck in a vice grip, not daring to look back over his shoulder, hating that there was nothing he could do but urge her silently to run faster than she already was. Her hooves hit the floor tiles with such speed as to make sparks.

With a deafening crack, the ledge and the anteroom on it began to give way. Hisoka swore he could feel the floor tilt beneath Senrima's hooves.

But then they were through the door and on solid ground. Senrima turned just in time for Hisoka to see the gopura that had stood perched on the edge of the mountain for untold millennia, itself as tall as an office building, tumble as though in slow motion down the slope. Of the pitch-dark gallery where they had just been, there was just a few meters left, and that flooded by bright sunlight.

"Believe me," Senrima said as she watched in abashed amazement, "I wasn't expecting _that_ to happen."

"This fortress may be more delicate than it looks," Hisoka said. And it looked damned delicate.

"Maybe. Then again," a thoughtful lilt, "maybe not. Either way, we should prepare ourselves for anything that may come our way."

* * *

"For the last time," Natsume said from the hot seat—which was to say, his desk chair back in the Summons office, "I don't know how to reopen the gate because _I_ wasn't the one who opened it the first time. I mean, I helped, but K took care of all the stuff that really mattered."

"You really expect us to believe your cat hacked her way into the Imaginary World," said a Chief Todoroki who could barely contain his derision, "without using any of the proper gates or their keepers, then disappeared inside with Kurosaki, sealed the gate up behind her, and hasn't been heard from since?"

"Yes," Natsume shot back, "because it's the truth. Are you happy now? The cat's out of the bag."

"Literally," Watari snorted. But the humor was lost on everyone else.

"You know what this means, don't you, Mr. Natsume?" said the Peacekeeping chief, relishing every word. "You're out of contact range of your minder. Which is a gross violation of the terms of your probation. As a division chief, it would be my pleasure to report this to Judgment and have it entered in your file. Some might say the safest course of action would be to have you locked up until we can ascertain whether K even intends to come back—"

"But any punishment shall be decided by myself," Konoe butted in, much to his agent's relief, "as Mr. Natsume's actions and the responsibility for them fall under Summons' jurisdiction."

Natsume uttered a thanks under his breath for that, but Tatsumi's stone-cold stare didn't fill him with any confidence he would be getting off lightly.

"And Mr. Kurosaki's punishment?" Alas, Konoe's interruption had not knocked the smug smile off Todoroki's face. If anything, it made it worse. "He broke the law, Konoe. As did that freak of a cat—and I don't believe for a second that she didn't know exactly what she was doing. If she knew enough to open a gateway into the Imaginary World, she must have known just as well that it was forbidden. To speak nothing of what we should be preparing ourselves for the boy to come back with this time. Another monster he cannot control?"

Tatsumi did not bother to hide the frustration in his sigh, but he held his tongue.

"The way he explained it to me was that this was purely a fact-finding mission," Natsume said, looking up at each of the division chiefs in turn. "He wanted to find out from his shiki what had gone wrong when it was summoned. Nothing illegal in that, is there?"

But Natsume's explanation did nothing to assuage either side.

"I want to send a team of my own officers in," Todoroki said, "immediately. With orders to retrieve Kurosaki and K. By any means necessary, if they must. And I want _her_ to send them in."

He jabbed a finger in Wakaba's direction. It seemed more like a stab, the way she recoiled from it with a distasteful grimace.

But Konoe said: "The second condition is fair enough. I will have Mr. Watari and Ms. Kannuki prepare the transfer. The first I have some hesitation about. I want Kurosaki and K unharmed, and I want one of my agents to accompany yours."

"What, to keep an eye on them?" Todoroki's snort made it clear he found the very suggestion of a Summons agent chaperoning ludicrous.

But Konoe crossed his arms determinedly over his chest. "To make sure everything is handled above-board. I've had enough of your representatives acting as though the laws of our world apply to everyone but them."

"Well, that won't matter much, will it, seeing as they won't be in _our_ world much longer? This is non-negotiable, Konoe. If you do not agree to my terms, it makes no difference. You know very well I can force your employees to comply if you force my hand."

"And just who do you plan to send in?" said Tatsumi.

"I was thinking Agent Kazuma," Todoroki said, watching Nonomiya's face throughout this exchange, "and her new partner. Two shinigami with experience in law enforcement are just what's needed to get to the bottom of this nonsense."

Nonomiya must have been practicing, because she managed to give very little of the insult she felt away. But Kazuma could see the signs. They were slight, but no one knew Nonomiya like she did.

"Sir," she spoke up, "if I may make a suggestion?"

Her chief wouldn't be pleased with her contradicting him, even if he wouldn't lower himself to showing it in front of Summons officers. But what did she care? He could chew her out for it later if his ego were so fragile it bothered him that much.

"Detective Imai is still green. He hasn't quite settled down into his existence as a shinigami yet. I fear that if I took him into Gensoukai in his current, unprepared state, without any assessment of his innate skills, let alone shiki compatibility, he could get possessed or torn apart by something over there. Considering the way he died, both of those are strong possibilities. And I'm sure you don't want to lose another member of your division so soon."

It was taking a gamble, speaking to her chief that way. And of Imai, who Kazuma suspected Todoroki had some ulterior motive for taking under his wing. At the moment, it was still nothing more than a suspicion, but she wondered if Imai's feeling of deja vu had anything to do with it.

Whether she was close to the mark or not, the tactic worked. After a moment of thought, Todoroki conceded: "You make a fair point, Ms. Kazuma. Nevertheless, I can't send you in to do the job without a partner." His grin widened. "You and Ms. Nonomiya have a history together. She even has a shiki or two of her own, if I'm not mistaken. Besides, it seems her particular talents are being wasted at Summons. I'm sure they wouldn't mind being relieved of a little dead weight. Why don't we have her accompany you into Gensoukai?"

Kazuma wasn't sure which she hated the most: the way Todoroki said she and Nonomiya had a history, or his dig at Nonomiya's performance in Summons. But if he had honestly expected her to work at odds with Tsuzuki's friends and colleagues, he should have known better and picked someone else.

Like me, she thought bitterly, still chafing at the memory of the raid she had led on the Castle of Candles. She could tell Nonomiya all she wanted that she had just been following orders, but the truth was, Kazuma envied her old partner her resolve. Though she wasn't sure how she could ever tell her that.

She noticed Nonomiya was looking back at her with a distinct glare, even as she politely answered Konoe's question of whether the arrangement was fine with her with a "I would be delighted to be of assistance in this matter."

Todoroki clapped. "Then it's decided. Your miko will open the gate, Konoe, and Nonomiya, with Ms. Kazuma, will journey into Gensoukai and retrieve Mr. Kurosaki before he can do any further damage. Shall we all plan on meeting again in Mr. Watari's lab, oh, two hours from now?"

* * *

There are few things more subtly disturbing than the certainty you are being watched, and that you have no idea whom by. That was the feeling that pervaded their party as the three made their way through the empty cyclopean stone halls of the mountain fortress, half-expecting some new monstrous creature to jump out of an alcove and try to kill them. But so far none of the bas reliefs their torchlight played across felt like stepping down from the walls they were carved out of.

"The architecture in this place doesn't look anything like the rest of Gensoukai," Hisoka observed as they passed by friezes of vague animals shapes that were as disorienting as fractals. "Or, at least, what I've seen of it. How old do you suppose it is?"

"Far older than any of us," Senrima said in a low voice. Out of reverence or to avoid being overheard, Hisoka couldn't tell. "Older than Tenkuu, I would imagine, and we call him the Old Man for good reason. But Tenkuu is based on deep, ancient magic, even if he keeps himself up-to-date. A place like this is more like an artifact, a bit of old code carried over by dumb coincidence and the tenacity of its own provenance."

A bit of old code, huh? "You think the fortress is intelligent? Like Tenkuu?"

"Kid, finding anything approaching an operating intelligence in this heap of rubble would be like finding a big brain at the center of Jupiter. Not impossible, just highly . . ."

Again, she trailed off. And this time paused in her tracks. In the silence, broken only by the crackle of their torch flames, Hisoka could almost swear he felt the mountain breathe. Perhaps with the rumble of machinery, churning deep in its heart. Then again, perhaps with magma, just waiting for a wanderer's careless step to come erupting up through these halls.

"I can swear to you, I've never been in here before," Senrima supplied, just when Hisoka thought he couldn't bear that silence any longer. "And yet, I feel like I know this place. That's what unsettles me."

"Could it be Chaos? Kijin said it's been around as long as there've been two heads to butt together."

But Senrima shook her head. "No. I've felt Chaos's influence, I know what that feels like. This isn't it. If anything, it's the opposite. There's a logic to this place, perhaps even too much logic that it starts to lose its own sense. It's almost as if . . . Yes." She strode forward, with some renewed purpose at the revelation, and Hisoka had to hurry to catch up. "This may sound crazy, I don't know how to even begin to describe it properly, but walking around here feels as though we're in a dream!"

Hisoka wasn't sure he was following, and he told her so.

"There are ancient legends," Senrima explained excitedly, "more like whispers, really, they're so old—describing a place known as the Fortress of Dreams. The stuff of dreams formed the foundation of the Imaginary World, so it's natural that a place to gather and protect their energy would have sprung up in those early times. Before our world became sophisticated enough in its infrastructure to maintain itself."

So she said with a kind of religious awe that Hisoka was at a loss to understand. Maybe it was a shikigami thing. When he looked down at K, she seemed more intent on getting to their destination, wherever that may be, than taking in the scenery.

For his part, Hisoka might have felt a bit more of that wonder if he hadn't come all this way in part to cure himself of his own dream problem. "It seems like a weird place to imprison someone you think is a traitor."

"Precisely what I was thinking. The security measures we've encountered so far have been geared toward keeping intruders out, but they're all but useless for keeping something _in_."

There had to be a good reason for the location, though.

Some indication of that arrived not long after, when (after coming to a thick, heavy door barred with a complex, equally heavy lock that K literally climbed inside in order to finagle open) the path before them dropped away into a humongous underground chamber. The way forward continued on the far side, but between them and where they needed to go was a moat easily the length of a sports stadium, and deeper than Hisoka could see. Because when he looked over the ledge, all he saw down below was a roiling sea of fire, like the surface of the sun. Not unlike the Lake of Fire back home, actually, only larger. And more of an impediment.

"Not a problem," Senrima said as she rolled her neck and cracked her knuckles. "We'll all just fly across and be on the other side in two shakes."

Somehow Hisoka had a feeling it wasn't going to be all that easy. He told her how he had felt weighed down by the mountain to the point he felt like he was walking through mud, and was unable to fly at all. K, in her way that only her shiki was able to understand, must have echoed his concerns, because Senrima's expression sobered the more she looked between the two of them.

Still, she was determined to put a positive face on it. "That's alright. I can take you both across on my back. I've made leaps thrice this length easy."

"Are you sure _your_ abilities haven't been compromised in any way?"

Senrima snorted. "As if any mere building, no matter how old, can compromise the legendary Thousand-Li Horse!" But Hisoka could sense a healthy amount of doubt there in the moment before she transformed.

In any event, it didn't appear as though they had a choice. There was no other way over that moat.

Senrima put everything she had into her launch off the ledge. But a curious thing happened. Hisoka had half-expected her to start losing altitude the moment she left the ground; but the farther out over that gulf they went, the more even and easy the flight became. He dared to look down at the fires below, and saw them shimmering with translucent shades of blue and violet, until what stretched below them was an infinite sky. It filled the entire chamber around them—or rather, the chamber disappeared, leaving only blue eternity in every direction. Wind ceased to exist. Hot and cold—even up and down—had no real meaning. Hisoka couldn't even tell if they were the ones moving, or if the sky was moving around them.

Only when they alit again on the platform on the far side of the chamber did its edges come back into focus. The moat behind them was black, no trace of fire in it to light its depths. Hisoka wasn't going to admit it out loud, but for a while there, he hadn't wanted the ride to end.

"What just happened?" he asked Senrima.

Who shrugged. "I don't know how to describe it exactly. Have you ever found yourself dreaming a certain terrifying thing, and, frustrated with the way it's going, you just take hold of it and force your will on it until it changes into something more pleasant for you?"

"Sure." Not lately, of course. Almost all his dreams these days were flashbacks or variations thereof that he would give anything to be able to alter at will. But there was a time, Hisoka supposed, when he was alive, when he could remember changing his dreams while he was in them. "But those are just dreams."

Senrima laughed at his choice of words. "Yes, precisely! If my suspicions are correct, _that_ is the true magic of this place! Anything is possible if you can dream it into being. If only you believe it hard enough."

"Couldn't I just dream us to the place where Rikugou is being held right now?"

Hisoka didn't bother hiding the frustration in his voice. And with it, Senrima's smile fell. He didn't mean to ruin what was apparently a deeply moving experience for her, but after the tense climb outside and dodging stone giants and feeling like the weight of this whole mountain was pressing down on him, he was weary and just wanted to be done with this place.

He sighed. "I'm sorry. It's just, all I've had for the last decade are nightmares. I hate going to sleep, because even though I need the rest, I know I'll never really get it. So forgive me if I'm a little slow to trust a place that operates on the same principles. I don't have much patience for mind games. Or anything that tries to get inside my head."

"Understandable," Senrima said with a sage nod. "I suppose an empath would get quite enough of that on a daily basis. In any case, it looks like you'll be able to give _your_ mind a rest for a few moments."

While they were talking, K had wandered on ahead, and must have triggered some feature within the fortress. The floor around them began to glow. And in front of them, barring their path, appeared a sort of holographic display. Upon closer inspection, it was made up of square tiles each sporting some sort of hieroglyphic, and the manner in which they were arranged looked suspiciously like mahjongg solitaire.

"Is this really the next test?" And did that mean the fortress had a sense of humor?

But Senrima looked quite serious as she grabbed Hisoka's arm, and stopped him from stepping forward. "This one isn't yours."

Indeed, K had this task well in hand already. As her eyes rapidly scanned the hologram, tiles began to light up and move or disappear, apparently at her will. Whatever game she was playing, it didn't fit the rules of mahjongg solitaire, as many of the tiles that winked out didn't seem to match up. Many even changed their symbols. But perhaps the configuration only made sense to K. It wouldn't have surprised Hisoka if she could see a whole other layer of order to the tiles that went right over his head. Either because of her experience with programming and hacking, or due to some wavelengths that her cat eyes picked up easily and his did not. Maybe a bit of both.

Whichever the case, soon the display was down to a handful of tiles scattered across the space. When those too disappeared, some mechanism beneath them was activated, and Hisoka felt the floor dislodge and rise beneath their feet. He glanced over at Senrima, but her expression was impassive, whatever she was thinking a mystery to him as they rose.

When their elevator reached its destination, they found themselves in a room like a large polygonal box with coffered bronze walls. A room with no door out but that which they had just come through. That didn't stop them from all feeling around for one, though.

" _You fumble about in vain_ ," a resonant, disembodied voice said after a few minutes of fruitless searching. " _There is no escape from me._ "

It wasn't a voice Hisoka recognized. More like Tenkuu's than Rikugou's or any other shiki with a human form that he had met, and he would have wagered that it belonged to the mountain itself.

That didn't bode well with Hisoka, but Senrima lit up with excitement. "Incredible! Are you the keeper of this fortress?"

" _No one invited you here. You seek that which you are not worthy to possess._ "

"Are you intelligent?" Senrima tried. She said aside to Hisoka, "An intelligence can be reasoned with—"

" _You_ _destroyed my foyer!_ "

So his suspicions had been correct: They _were_ being watched. The horse shiki rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. "Er, yeah, sorry about that. A complete accident, I assure you."

" _But you will find your weapons useless here. I control all possibilities, all outcomes!_ " the voice proclaimed, and Hisoka didn't need empathy to tell that even for a building, it sounded pretty pissed off. " _You will be devoured as I have devoured every blasphemer who has set foot inside this holy ground!_ "

Even before it could finish its threat, the coffers set in the many walls lit up, and the many walls themselves began to slowly move inward. The three knew precisely where the fortress was headed with this new tact and redoubled their efforts to find some hidden door out of their prison. Senrima tried as a horse to kick down the walls, but nothing she did made even a dent. Only made the room resonate like a rung bell. She reared and tossed her head in frustration. "It's no good!"

K let out a plaintive caterwaul.

Which hardened her shiki's resolve. "I will stay in this form and try to hold back the walls as long as possible, give you two a little extra time to figure out a solution—if one even exists—but I fear it will only delay the inevitable."

Hisoka wasn't listening. As he looked around at the walls hoping desperately for a way out they might have missed before to present itself, he noticed not all of the coffers had lit up. Some were out completely, but a few others, too high up for him to reach, winked wanly, like candles running out of wick. An idea sprang to his mind, and he took out the bow and nocked an arrow.

When he let it fly, his aim was true, but some invisible force repelled the arrow from the coffer's surface. "Ah, well," Senrima said with a desperate whinny. "It was worth a try."

But Hisoka wasn't done yet. "No. That's our way out. I don't know how I know it," he said to the other two's skeptical looks, "I just do. If I can just hit those blinking coffers, the room should stop shrinking and let us out."

"But you heard the voice. Weapons won't work here."

No, perhaps they wouldn't. But Hisoka had a hunch. He unslung the quiver from his back and handed it and the bow to Senrima. "This test is mine," he assured her. "I know what needs to be done." If she was right, and this place operated on the logic of dreams, then he already had the tools he needed to get them out of here inside his person. He could remember when he was a child, and in his dreams his hand could be a gun, and take down anyone who wished him harm if he only believed in it deeply enough.

Going through the motions of making the gun-hand and shooting noises as a conscious adult was almost too embarrassing to concentrate properly through, but he had to do it. To save not just himself, but Senrima and K as well. He took careful aim at the blinking coffers with his index finger, and put all his faith in his shots as he made the noise. It wasn't so different from casting spells as a shinigami, when he really thought about it. He already possessed the powers of a god; what he needed now was to embrace the powers of his human imagination.

Even then, he was surprised when said "shots" actually hit their targets, and the wall panels one after another stopped their progress inward.

He barely had a second to breathe a sigh of relief before Senrima grabbed him in a great bear hug, lifting him up off the floor and squeezing what air he still had out of him. "You did it! You see? I told you all you needed was to believe in your own power and this place would do the rest! Now we should be able to find the exit. . . ."

But Hisoka's relief was short-lived. As soon as Senrima had taken a few steps away from him, the floor opened up beneath Hisoka's feet, and he found himself plunging downward into darkness. Without companions or weapons to defend himself—without even a trace of light to see the way.


	17. Elusive butterfly

_**Trigger warning this chapter,** for discussions of suicide._

* * *

Tsuzuki couldn't say how long he had been lying there in the center of the room, held fast to the floor by the glowing sigil beneath him.

Already rendered effectively helpless by the poisoned blade, he could not fight back, only feebly protest as Muraki laid him out on the floorboards, and under his breath, as though to a lover, chanted the words that would activate the trap.

Tsuzuki hadn't the energy, or the sobriety through the pain licking along every nerve, to be surprised by such an underhanded move. He must have known that Muraki would resort to such tactics eventually. The events of the last several months could not have been enough to alter that man's nature from what it was before. Only render it down into a more concentrated form.

"This should feel familiar to you," the doctor said. "I believe you were in one of these traps before, albeit a little more vertical. I think you'll find this position kinder on your circulation."

Knowing Muraki, it probably enabled the poison to circulate more effectively through his blood. No matter. Tsuzuki could heal from any wound. Eventually. Though that was small consolation while he felt at every moment as though he were being attacked by stinging sea jellies and fire ants at the same time. And unable to relieve a single itch. His teeth were chattering so much from the shock to his system, and his mouth felt as though it had been numbed, so his muttering what Muraki could go do to himself sounded rather less than threatening. It was barely even intelligible.

It only earned him a chuckle. "I was going to give you a hint as to how to free yourself," Muraki said, "but in light of your ingratitude just now, I think perhaps I'll just let you figure this one out on your own. It shouldn't pose too much trouble for you. M-m, well . . . maybe when your body starts to feel like your own again, that is."

Entirely too conscious of them, Tsuzuki willed his muscles to stop their trembling. But they had a will of their own under the poison's influence, and he could not stop from trembling no matter how much he wanted to.

A moan of frustration tore itself from his throat. At least he needed no finer control for that. But it did not garner Tsuzuki any more sympathy from the doctor. He stood above Tsuzuki like a man made of ice and metal—not without feeling, but what feeling he had, cold and inhuman. Was this how he had appeared to Hisoka, as he lay on the grass, racked with pain from his curse? Had Hisoka wanted to smash in the sadistic smirk on Muraki's lips as badly as Tsuzuki did now? Had he even been able to think about revenge in his state?

It was difficult to imagine what Hisoka had been through. Though Tsuzuki felt that, if anything came close to it, surely it was this. Intense pain Tsuzuki had felt before, from wounds far more grave than any he had now. And he wasn't sure anything could come close to Sargatanas ripping his essence from Tsuzuki's soul.

This was merely a different kind of suffering. Like dying of cancer or influenza, rather than a knife wound or even grief. He felt like death itself. Like his own flesh was turning against him, from the vein outward. Heart racing out of control, burning up and racked with chills simultaneously, unable to catch his breath or focus on the dark ceiling light above him. Feeling like the whole world was spinning off its axis beneath him. In retrospect, he was glad Muraki had kept him drugged and unconscious the last time he was under the poison's spell. It would be a blessing if he just passed out.

* * *

Eventually he must have.

When he woke, it was sometime in the middle of the night. He could do nothing but lie there, alone, struggling against the intangible, if not invisible, bonds that held him fast, with what little strength was returning to him.

It did no good. Somewhere there had to be a physical setup of the pentacle that held him, but he did not know where it was, or what good knowing would even do him. Could he use his telekinesis to affect something in another room? Maybe if he knew which room that was and could envision it. And maybe if he weren't feeling intensely ill and was able to concentrate.

He tried meditating on his surroundings, but meditation had never really been Tsuzuki's strong suit. He could go for short stretches quite effectively, particularly if he was focused on some goal; but with nothing else to do but think, no end to this torment to look forward to, his mind wandered before he was even aware it was wandering.

To where he had gone wrong. How he had fucked this all up. Not to mention, let himself be captured. It was his weakness where Muraki was concerned that it always came back to. Yet, if he ever got out of this trap, could he honestly say he wouldn't hesitate to right that wrong? If Tsuzuki knew anything about himself, he knew he would probably fail at every opportunity he was granted to put an end, once and for all, to that man.

Muraki certainly took his time returning. Tsuzuki was awake to watch the sun come up. Or, more precisely, to see the light that came through the opaqued windows gradually brighten, and shift slightly throughout the morning. For a few hours, it fell across him, warming him, and must have lulled him into another nap. This one, almost restful. It was Muraki's return that woke him.

"And how are we feeling this morning?" he asked in his most innocuous bedside manner.

It made Tsuzuki want to spit in his face. He could only shift in his prison. "You know exactly how I'm feeling." His throat burned around the muttered words, but at least he had no trouble forming them.

Muraki hummed in thought. "Your body is metabolizing the poison quite nicely, I see. It would appear it's time for another dose."

Tsuzuki's panic the moment the shuriken blade reappeared spurred his body into action; but it was not enough to break the pentagram's hold, and in the end he could do nothing to stop Muraki from etching a thin cut into his forearm.

"What's the point of all this?" he hissed, knowing he didn't have long before the poison retook its hold. "You tell me you want me to escape, but I can't do it if you keep cutting me with that thing!"

"Wrong, wrong. . . ." Muraki sighed and squatted down, as if to better impart some wisdom on a more willing pupil. "You need to start thinking ahead, Tsuzuki. When I do send you back to your colleagues, do you suppose Enma is going to simply let you have the run of the place? Return to business-as-usual, just like that?"

"We've been over this already. But I can't learn to do what you want me to when you keep drugging me!"

Already Tsuzuki could feel the venom's fire start to course through his limbs, adding fuel to flames that had only started to burn themselves out. He shut his eyes tight, willing his empty stomach to calm, as a strong wave of vertigo rushed over him again. This was like a roller coaster from Hell, one he could never seem to get off of.

"Do you think I became immune to a dozen different toxic substances overnight?" Muraki was asking him, as though he really expected Tsuzuki to answer, let alone pay attention. "Of course not. I had to work at it. By taking minute doses at the start—not without their uncomfortable side effects, but far from lethal amounts. Over time, I gradually increased the dosages I was taking, sometimes over the course of many years, building up my body's tolerances a step at a time, to the point where now I can recover quite easily from what would certainly kill a lesser man."

If he was expecting congratulations, or for Tsuzuki to be impressed, he would have to wait.

But it didn't seem to matter. "I have every confidence that you can do the same with this substance. Granted, it appears to work a bit differently from the sorts of toxins I've built up tolerance to. But then, as a shinigami's body operates differently from a mortal's, it follows that what inhibits and afflicts it should operate differently as well. A toxin that slows your cells' speed of repair to a near halt can be incredibly detrimental in a fight, but its other, more minor effects, these psychological components—"

Tsuzuki couldn't help a bitter laugh at that. To have the very real pain he was experiencing passed off as no more than "psychological". . . .

"Those can be overcome," Muraki told him with a hard glare. "If one possesses the desire and will power to overcome them."

"Power through the pain, in other words," Tsuzuki muttered through his teeth.

"Yes. That is precisely what I mean. The human mind can withstand any amount of pain. I would imagine a superhuman mind, all the more so."

It seemed, however, that Muraki did not understand the absurdity of what he was asking. How could he? Enma's poison didn't work on mortals. And even if it did respond to something demonic in Muraki's nature, that same genetic material he claimed to have inherited from Tsuzuki's father, it would not affect him to the same extent. So to ask Tsuzuki to just ignore this feeling like every nerve was on fire and every muscle cramped, to just work around it, was a joke too infuriating to be funny.

The moment Tsuzuki started to laugh, it turned to a sob in his throat. And with that, tears sprang up in his eyes that he couldn't wipe away and couldn't stop. Though it shamed him to let Muraki see him like this—even though he had already seen Tsuzuki at much lower points—knowing there was absolutely nothing Tsuzuki could do about it just made the tears flow all the thicker. It was hopeless. Muraki lied just as he always had. He would never let Tsuzuki out of here, and this pain would never end.

* * *

Another day passed into night. This time, however, the pain would not let Tsuzuki sleep.

The dark light fixture in the center of the ceiling stared down at him like an eye. A single eye, a single fixed object in a room that was spinning out of control.

Even when Tsuzuki closed his eyes, he could sense it there, behind his eyelids, watching him with lascivious intent, like a voyeur. Judging him. Mocking him. At one point he even yelled at it to shut up; then, realizing he had been talking to an inanimate household item, laughed until it was himself he wished would shut up. The sound of his own laughter hurt his brain.

But the silence, when it returned—that hurt too. Unendurable in its completeness, its alone-ness. After a while, he started to invent things to hear in it. Hallucinations. They must have been. There was no one else there.

But he swore he could hear music.

A repeating melody of violins? A record playing in the distance?

Or voices talking in the hall? His own—or Muraki's?

 _Which Muraki?_

God, but he couldn't even answer that anymore.

" _The patient appears to be bent on self-destruction. We must all endeavor to protect him from himself. Stay vigilant. He's determined. He may resist you if you try to stop him. He may not be able to understand, but what we are doing is for his own good."_

It was Yukitaka's voice he still heard in his head, speaking to the nurses in the other room, thinking Tsuzuki in his catatonia couldn't hear or understand him. But the words permeated his skull anyway. Even as he lay there unmoving, as if smothered under a heavy fog, his soul cried out in desperation to be allowed to die, to be allowed an end to this pain of living, but he just couldn't make them hear.

No, not the pain of living. The pain of existing. He technically no longer had a life to end. Though he didn't see what it mattered, what the difference really was. Wasn't this life all the same, just in a different body, one that had no set expiration date?

He knew it had to be just another hallucination, but he saw a butterfly flit above his face, bobbing up and down in the air as though keeping time with the beat of strummed chords of a guitar. _Don't be concerned/ It will not harm you/ It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of . . ._ And he wanted to catch hold of it . . . _With nets of wonder_ . . . and let it carry his soul away on a chip of broken glass, away from this clinic that protected a life he did not want. Away from the prison of this body.

But this was not Yukitaka's clinic. And he could not cut a way out from his own flesh.

He could not even move, as the butterfly dissolved into Muraki's face, lowering over his. Coming at him with that scalpel—no, that poisoned blade. "No . . . please, no more . . ." he rasped, but maybe this was an hallucination, too. He couldn't feel the cut of the blade. He couldn't feel anything.

The screaming pain drowned out everything else.

* * *

In his non-sleep he felt them visit, one by one. Come to spit on his image, to kick him when he was down, get him back for everything that he had done, if only by showing up. Showing up was all they needed to do.

Mariko. . . . Maki. . . . Mitani. . . . Tsubaki. . . . Eileen. . . . Kazusa. . . . Hisae. . . . Maria. . . .

The line snaked through the room, without end despite the walls, stretching back years, back decades. He could see them all. He remembered every name. He relived their deaths. Despite what he wanted his coworkers to think of him, he remembered every one. Some of them _were_ his coworkers. God, he had caused them such pain. There was Hisoka—hanging back behind the crowds, knowing it would wound Tsuzuki _just a little more_ if he kept out of reach, avoided eye contact—and a few other faces that he hadn't seen in years, faces that were no longer in the Judgment Bureau because of him. Not because they had moved on—no, they'd never got that chance—but because he had caused their total obliteration.

Even Fujisawa was there, though Tsuzuki had never exchanged a single word with him. It didn't matter what the boy had done. Tsuzuki was responsible for his death, his resurrection, the murders the boy had committed—all of it. _If not for me, Focalor would never have targeted his school, and Mitani would never have become a killer. If not for me, there would have been no Muraki in the first place to bring him back._

He didn't blame any of them for their condemnation. He deserved every last bit of it. And he wallowed in it. Reveled in it, if only because it was satisfying in some way to feel justified. To feel the crushing weight of his guilt matched in their stares, and doubled. It still wasn't all that he deserved.

He could tell himself he had done his best. He could say he was ordered to end their lives. Or, if not, that he couldn't have saved them. He could try to convince himself that some of them had even wanted to die.

But in the end, what difference did it make? He was a killer. Always had been.

He could remember standing in a churchyard garden in the middle of wartime. The sky blue, the grass green, and the only reminder that somewhere out there people were in a struggle for their lives, the emptiness of the garden dirt beneath the nun's hoe. He watched her dig up dandelions and tiny, feeble yams and, because there was nothing else, put them in her basket. He could hear her labored breathing, and her gasp echoing in her empty body when she finally noticed him and his partner standing above her.

He spoke a name, a question, and watched as fear flashed across her face. It was a young face, but badly scarred by leprosy beneath her wimple. "She doesn't live here anymore," the young nun said. "She died a long time ago."

He knew that was a lie, but his sympathies went out to her. So he asked her her name. "Agrippina?" It came out as a question too, not because she was uncertain of it, but because she wasn't sure whether she should say.

"Tsuzuki," said his partner, "that's her. She's the one we came for."

And, like that, the young woman dropped her basket and ran. Tsuzuki swore and gave chase. He knew, in that brief second their eyes had met, that she knew exactly what he was, and what he was here to do. "Damn it, if she screams," his partner began, knowing the last thing they needed was to involve the local authorities. But Tsuzuki had no intention of letting that happen. "We just want to help you!" he called out to the young woman. And as she turned to look back at him, she tripped, and fell on the grass.

Help, huh? Was that what one called putting another living being out of its misery? She was the third case of starvation and malnutrition he and his partner had had to visit that week, thanks to this bloody war, and it never got any easier. Doubtless there would be another one tomorrow, or the next day. So could he be forgiven if he was a little less patient with her than he normally would have been?

No. No, there was no forgiving the way he treated her. It was clear his "help" was the very last thing she wanted.

She tried to crawl back to her feet, but he got there first. Turned her to face him, and held her tightly in place as he tried to explain to her what he was doing there, what he had to do, that she had no reason to be afraid. But she wouldn't listen. She just screamed. She tried to worm away. This was a fight for her very life. And for someone whose body was eating itself, he hadn't expected he would have to work so hard to hold her down, just to keep her from getting away from him. "Can't you shut her up? She'll bring the whole place down on our heads," said his partner as he caught up. And that was when the young woman clocked Tsuzuki good.

He had to laugh. Her strength and determination to live, while not exactly funny, nonetheless surprised him. And hurt. "Stubborn bitch," he muttered under this breath, hating himself for it the moment the words were out, but she didn't know that she was his sixth summons in as many days, and the other five combined hadn't given him a fraction of this trouble. He told his partner to hold her legs down already—he was tired of getting a knee in his ribs—while he fought her enough to straddle her body. He pinned her wrists above her head with one hand, covered her mouth with the other. Thought he felt a rib crack under his knee and felt bad for it, but it wouldn't matter for long. "For God's sake, would you just calm down and listen to us for one second!" he tried, but she only shut her eyes and screamed behind his hand. Terrified. Not wanting to die.

The two of them could not have been more different.

"Tsuzuki, we gotta take her!" his partner was saying. "I know we should try to get their consent first, but look at her. She's not gonna give it."

The young woman's eyes flew wide at those words. In the struggle, her wimple had come loose, and dark hair spilled around her face. And for a moment, he saw through the scars of her disease as though they were never there. She was just a girl. Emaciated, malnourished, but still clinging desperately to this life that couldn't possibly have given her anything but pain and loneliness during its short span. Still, those eyes burned. They didn't plead with him like he thought they would. Rather, she seemed like a small animal, that knew he could crush her in his grip, and was just waiting for him to do it, defiant until the end. Full of hate for him and everything he was and stood for, to the bottom of her soul.

Tsuzuki hated his partner at that moment, too. Not like this young woman hated him, but because he knew the man was right.

And he hated the girl, kicking feebly but kicking still, gasping for air. Because if she hadn't clung so stubbornly to life, he wouldn't be here, about to take it from her.

But more than either of them, he hated himself. For making such a mess of this. That he had to be the one to do it in the first place. That he had to be the one to end her suffering with more suffering.

And because once he allowed that cruel irony to sink in, a part of him felt like he was precisely where he was supposed to be. This was right.

Not just right, but righteous.

* * *

—to be drenched in blood.

It coats his hands, flows down over his wrists and arms like the waters of life itself. Warm. Delicious. There's something lovely about seeing it leave a body. The way there's something beautiful in watching lava, freed from the earth, create new land, new patterns, even as it destroys. He could watch it pour without end, fascinated, if his veins didn't close themselves back up.

If there's any saving grace about his own flesh, however, it's that he can repeat the process over and over again.

The boy in front of him, sadly, he can't say the same about. And maybe that's what makes him so beautiful, in his way. He has only one life to give. And now that Tsuzuki has opened him up, that life pours forth like a fountain. He can see the end fast approaching through the lad's wide, staring eyes. That's something to envy. Something to worship. Something that sets him tingling with an excitement he can barely contain—

 _No,_ Tsuzuki's mind rebelled against the memory, _that wasn't me, those weren't my thoughts, my feelings, I wasn't in control! That wasn't even Hijiri—Hijiri's fine, he's O.K., he's alive! I didn't kill him!_

But did that change anything?

Did that change the fact that Hisoka had died brutally under his hand, that in his final moments he had seen Tsuzuki celebrating his slaughter, lapping up his blood—had it really mattered, in that moment, that Tsuzuki had been just a passenger in his own body?

 _I meant for it to be Hijiri. It doesn't matter that it wasn't. I_ meant _to kill him. I_ wanted _to kill him. I was so elated to think that I_ had—

That Sargatanas thought he had.

 _No. That_ I _had. It was me all along._ Sargatanas might have made him swing the cleaver, but he could not have succeeded if that capacity, that instinct, hadn't already existed inside Tsuzuki. _He didn't make me a killer._

He was a killer long before that.

* * *

"He wanted what everyone wants when they agree to take on the burdens of a shinigami," Chief Konoe said to the assembled. "Perhaps what every man and woman put on this Earth ever truly wants. To know that he made a difference. To have touched another soul. To have mattered, if only for a moment, for even a single individual."

Thee mood was a solemn one, each soul remaining silent out of respect for a fallen colleague. But there was not a wet eye in the office of the Summons Division. Then again, if this had been the man's first death, maybe things would have been a bit different.

If he had only been Tsuzuki's first, or second, or third partner, maybe it would have been different. But everyone listening, and trying hard not to meet his eyes, had been his partner before. At least once. And none for very long.

"That's all any of our lives are made of anyway," Konoe said in a low voice, nodding to himself, as if to reassure himself that, for some higher reason he wasn't privy to, this was how it was supposed to be: "Moments. Individuals. And he helped a lot of people. He granted them a peaceful transition into the next world. I like to think, if he had known what was going to happen, he would have said he had no regrets."

Standing at the back of the crowd of coworkers, Tsuzuki wished he could vanish through the wall behind him. Anything to make him disappear at that moment. Because he knew, even if their backs were turned to him, that he was on every single mind in the place. As they listened to Konoe's eulogy, he knew what they were all thinking: _It could have been me._

Usually, when a coworker "retired," when their soul moved on, it was by choice. They had finally earned their rest. There was the rare occasion when one's service was terminated abruptly by Enma, or, even more rarely, by some supernatural foe in the field.

But murder? Could one even murder someone who was already dead?

"King Enma has reviewed the case personally," Konoe had told him in private earlier, "and determined your partner's demise to have been an accident—"

"An _accident_? Chief, I _murdered_ him!"

"Technically, it was the fault of that shikigami of yours—what's his name again? Touda?"

"But it was _my_ duty to control him, and I failed! I lost control, and because of that, one of our people is gone! How can Enma even begin to see that as a forgivable offense?" It made no sense. If Tsuzuki had been the Judge of the Dead, he would not have been so quick to overlook the evidence. He would have had the guilty party terminated, for the good of everyone else. Though perhaps that was just wishful thinking.

"His Grace has ordered you to pay a fine," Tatsumi put in, "if that's any consolation. It will be deducted from your pay."

But Tsuzuki scoffed at that. Did _His Grace_ really think _money_ was going to make up for his brutally slaying a coworker? Burning him into oblivion? The fact that he hadn't meant to do it just made it all the worse.

He could still see the panic on his partner's face when he realized Touda had him trapped, that there was no way out except through his flames. He could still hear his partner's voice, his screams, calling for Tsuzuki to help him, to save him. It would have been a lie to say Tsuzuki still heard them in his dreams. He heard them every waking minute of the day, too, in every gap of silence between spoken words. Even under the words themselves.

I am in Hell, he thought. This whole world is nothing more than a private hell, and I was sent here to be tortured in it.

He collapsed into the chair across from Konoe, burying his face in his hands. "He should never have brought me here, made me a shinigami. He should have just let me die for good. All I do is cause the people around me more pain." He was a _god_ , for God's sake, Enma was. "Couldn't he foresee any of this?"

"Maybe _you_ should have. What?" Tatsumi said to the chief's grunt of protest. "Tsuzuki should have known when he acquired a being as powerful as that snake whether he would be able to control it. Let alone, when he decided to use it in the field untested. He's absolutely right. This _is_ all his fault. A fine is a slap in every other Summons officer's face. How are they supposed to do their job when they can't even trust they'll be safe in the same room with him?"

 _That's how you feel about me, isn't it, Tatsumi? That's why our partnership couldn't make it. When you cut through all the excuses, the incompatible personalities, the petty arguments over protocol—what it really comes down to is you didn't feel safe with me. You never knew when I might blow up in your face, and drag you with me down to Hell._

The chief began to tell his secretary off for making a bad situation worse, but Tsuzuki had to stop him. "It's all right, Chief. It's true, so why shouldn't I have to hear it?"

This had been his burden to bear from the beginning. This was the reason he'd tried and failed so many times to end his existence. Because deep down, he knew what the basis of that existence was. Maybe that was why he'd felt such kinship with Touda before he even properly met him. They both seemed to have been made for only one real purpose: to destroy.

Leave the rebuilding to some more capable party.

* * *

"You still think suicide is the only just death?" Tsuzuki had asked some other time, in some other place.

And Tatsumi said with a smile as forced as his answer, "I never did make a very good psychopomp, did I?"

But he never really needed to explain his reasoning to Tsuzuki. It would have been preaching to the choir.

"I know the Lords of the Dead value taking your own life as one of the worst sins one can commit. I understand they see it as squandering some precious gift. But it is the only truly democratic option. It's the only death that is a conscious choice. And death should be a choice," Tatsumi said more to himself than to Tsuzuki, as he stared out at the city in the night, "that no one else ought to have a right to make for you. No one gives you an option in being born. If you cannot decide whether or how to enter your life, you should at least be able to decide when and how to leave it. So, yes, that's still my opinion."

Somewhere below, muffled by window glass, a siren sounded. A different siren from what had stuck in their minds in the last year of the war, like a cicada song that never seemed to end. How much they had survived together, while dead. How much they never should have had to. No wonder their partnership ended. No wonder this was the only way they could remain friends.

"You might think it's a coward's way out—"

"I would never say that," Tsuzuki said, so full of certainty that Tatsumi couldn't help but turn to look at him. As if to judge how sincere Tsuzuki really was. Or whether his answer was just a test. "You know I would never say that, Tatsumi."

He would be a damnable hypocrite if he ever did. Whether or not it was true.

"It isn't cowardice," Tsuzuki insisted, not knowing whether he truly believed it or just needed to. Sure that Tatsumi, who'd had that choice taken away, felt the same. "It's knowing when you've had all you can take."

* * *

 _And then you just keep taking._

 _. . . and taking. And taking._

 _And taking. . . ._

 _Christ . . . it never ends._

* * *

Why couldn't one's own death be left up to every individual? It would make him obsolete, but, honestly, he didn't mind becoming obsolete.

Because no one would ever choose to die. And the world would become crowded, and resources would quickly grow scarce and run out, bodies would wear out and become burdensome to drag around, and pretty soon the world would be miserable.

That was the logic, anyway. That was the reason they gave for their laws and regulations, for the Kiseki, for judges like Enma.

For an institution like the Summons Division, created especially for those pesky stubborn, selfish folks who loved living just a little too much. They took souls for those souls' own good. Or at very least, for the well-being of those left alive. They made the tough choices so the innocent wouldn't have to. So they could go to their rewards unburdened by the karma of that final decision.

Bullshit.

What complete and utter nonsense.

He knew reality was different. He was proof. No matter how he might try to deny it. No matter how gay the colors they tried to paint over the truth, he could see it bleeding through. An ugly, grinning skull.

 _That_ was his reality. That was the true image of his soul.

And who decided he had to be this way? The same force or universal plan that determined when and how each soul was supposed to die? Because Tsuzuki was finding it harder and harder to believe in Fate.

Not that it existed, of course. He could not deny that.

Only, maybe it didn't deserve to.

* * *

He wasn't sure whether the Muraki Kazutaka sitting calmly in a chair against the wall was real, or just another hallucination. He suspected it was the former, however, come to watch him for a while, see if he'd made any more progress in his escape.

Or in his tolerance.

 _Not that again. No more. God, please. I can't take any more._

He might have said some or all of that out loud. Muraki lifted his head from off the wall, looking like he'd just started to doze off.

"Do you know where you are?"

It smells like the clinic in Tokyo, in Taisho year something-or-other. Looks like that hotel room with Tatsumi, Showa twenty-five, thirty perhaps. But it can't be either one, if _he's_ here—if he's _really_ here—

"You were talking to yourself," Muraki says, as though that might clear things up at all. But his tone, the dim light glinting off his glasses—it's too easy to confuse him with the Tatsumi from Tsuzuki's memory. "You've been doing that a lot lately."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"You're doing it now, Tsuzuki."

"What?" _No. That can't really be possible. He must be lying, trying to make me think I_ must _be hallucinating._

But it was possible, wasn't it? He'd been seeing things, hearing things, this whole time—dreaming dreams more real than they had any right to be, and getting a lot less sleep than his brain needed. What proof did Tsuzuki have that the Muraki sitting across from him was real? Each time the man came back with the knife, he added another little cut to the one before. The build-up of poison in Tsuzuki's blood made it impossible to judge reality from fiction.

"Classic dissociation," Muraki sighed. "You can't run from your physical torments, or relieve yourself of them, so you've retreated down the only path open to you. Replaced one pain with another. Is that the solution, Tsuzuki? Do you find you can think more clearly if you focus on the sins of your past? Isn't this just another way of avoiding the real problem before you?"

Tsuzuki had to laugh, albeit bitterly. If this really was all just his imagination, some hallucinated catechism, how queer it felt, playing the role of the doctor, diagnosing himself. It was fitting, somehow. His whole existence was just one big joke, wasn't it? A tragedy, full to the brim of irony. Just one punchline after another.

 _See how badly he wishes to die; we will make him indestructible._

 _See how little he values his life; we will make him kill those who cling most strongly to their own._

 _See how happy he is among his friends; we will wait till just the most painful moment to rob him of them, one by one._

Like notes in a young doctor's notebook. Or chapters in a god of death's.

Enma. Muraki. Tsuzuki cursed them both. They couldn't just let him be. They couldn't just let him repent for his sins like any other soul, no, they had to make sure he relived them over and over and over . . . ad infinitum. Was there even a point when either one ever said "enough"? How many lifetimes did a soul have to suffer before it was allowed eternal rest? How long did it need to go on repeating its sins until the debt was paid?

"He'll never let you go, you know. It would be better if you just accepted that. You might even learn to appreciate it."

Tsuzuki started in horror at that sound of that voice. So disarmingly young, innocent—deceptively so. He tried to fight anew, desperate to get away from it, but he felt weak, drained, his limbs less responsive the harder he tried. "Go away, go away, you're not real," he chanted under his breath as a mantra, in his mind screaming, _Christ, don't let him appear._

But of course the harder you try not to think of a thing, the clearer it forms in your mind. But, God, why did it have to be _him_? Why couldn't it be Hisoka? The guilt would still kill him, but at least he could hallucinate someone he actually _wanted_ to see again.

"You can't wish me away," said a wide-eyed, ten-year-old Asato, standing beside Muraki. "I'm always here. Because you're a part of me," he said in mocking, sing-song tone, "and I love you."

A long, wailing moan escaped Tsuzuki, as if he could hope to make his younger self disappear if he could just drown out the sound of his voice. "Make him stop," he pled with Muraki, "I don't care what you have to do, just make him go away!"

Muraki turned and looked right at the boy. But he said, "Whom are you talking about, Tsuzuki?"

"You don't see him, do you? Of course you don't. . . ." He felt like sobbing in his desperation. How could he expect Muraki to do a damn thing about a figment of his imagination? When he could very well be imagined himself? Tsuzuki couldn't close his eyes and make this go away. There was no escaping himself. Nowhere left in his mind to hide.

Muraki leaned over him. At least the cold fingers prying gently at his eyelids, tilting his head one way and then the other, felt real. Though when Muraki's face, hovering above him, morphed into his own, Tsuzuki's already overworked heart hammered so painfully fast in his chest he felt as though it would surely stop. And prayed it would. Up close, the evil in that childish face was all he could see. Up close, the resemblance made itself so clear, he wondered how he never saw that child in Muraki before.

"I'll take good care of you, you'll see," the boy said in his own and Muraki's voice, though those couldn't possibly be the words that fell from the real Muraki's lips. They didn't seem to match. Still, they were all Tsuzuki heard. "Why fight it? You can't run anymore. Let's be together again, you and me. Like old times." His hand brushed the hair from Tsuzuki's fevered brow, tender as a mother's, cool as a compress. "I'll help you remember."

 _I'll help you remember what you are._

 _Do you believe in monsters, Tsuzuki? You'd better. 'Cause you_ are _one._


	18. Free bird

It wasn't the crossing over into the Imaginary World, or even their mission, but being left alone with Nonomiya Kochou that Kazuma had been dreading the most about this trip.

And as soon as the tengu brothers' task of accompanying them through the gate into Gensoukai was finished, that was precisely what she was. Alone. With Kochou. Kazuma tried to make small talk, asking how the Summons Division had been getting on, but Nonomiya shut her down almost immediately.

"Do you think maybe we can just _not talk_ for a little while? I can't pretend . . . I don't have the patience . . . I just think I'd like to focus on the task at hand right now."

Kazuma could hear Nonomiya's gritted teeth in those words—even though Nonomiya directed them away from her—and she hated hearing that almost as much as she hated the words themselves. This wasn't how their mission was supposed to go. In her mind, she'd had this fantasy of their partnership magically healing itself in this magical place, but now it struck her just how deluded and childish that was. In fact, it was almost as if the unreality of Gensoukai was making Nonomiya recede from her at an even faster rate.

So Kazuma stopped in the middle of the road. "Is this really how this whole trip is going to be?"

Nonomiya spun around. "What do you mean?"

And Kazuma could have laughed. _Like she doesn't know perfectly well what I mean._ "You treating me like I stabbed you in the back or something. Like what I did was completely inexcusable. But I wasn't the one fighting against my very own coworkers. Not to mention, basically abetting an agent who very possibly could have been rogue, not to mention dangerous—"

Then it was Nonomiya's turn to force a laugh. "I thought we agreed long ago, Shin. Tsuzuki wasn't our enemy. Summons wasn't our enemy. But you stand there and talk as though you feel like _I'm_ the one who committed treason! I was only trying to protect our friends—"

"What the hell do you think _I_ was trying to do!"

That stunned Nonomiya to speechlessness. Her narrow eyes went wide, staring back at Kazuma as though seeing her for the first time. But whatever had come over her, however little her defenses had begun to chip, it only lasted for a few seconds. "You know that raid on the Castle of Candles was a witch hunt, don't you?" she said. "Yet you went along with it anyway. No, excuse me—you volunteered to _lead_ it."

"Because those were my _orders_."

Nonomiya rolled her eyes at that familiar line, and Kazuma wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake sense into her.

She put a hand over her heart instead, praying her sincerity might by some chance reach Nonomiya, and change her mind. "Besides, who do you trust to get something like that right? Me, or some asshole like Endo? Maybe you've forgotten what it means to be a Peacekeeper, Kochou, but I haven't. We exist, by the grace of Enma, to _protect._ Did you stop to think for one moment that in following that order, even knowing it was complete bullshit, that maybe that was what I was trying to do?"

Nonomiya crossed her arms. "What, cover your own butt?"

"I was trying to cover yours!"

At that, Nonomiya truly didn't know what to say. Or maybe, Kazuma thought while she watched her partner open and close her mouth like an indecisive fish, she had a lot of things she wanted to say, but had the self-restraint not to actually voice them.

And maybe that was for the best. Kazuma feared that the two of them still stood on a precipice, but as long as neither of them said anything they couldn't take back, they were not so far gone off that ledge that they couldn't walk away again.

At last, Nonomiya threw her hands up in the air and trudged determinedly onward. It wasn't the end Kazuma would have liked for the conversation, but realistically, the fight could have gotten a whole lot worse before it got better. She could live with shelving it there.

In any case, the southern gate of the Capital appeared like a godsend up the road, saving them both from more of this uncomfortable conversation. And as they got closer to the massive gate, a small figure who was waiting there noticed them and began to wave.

At a certain point, he could stand it no longer and ran out to greet them. The person who pulled up beside the pair, out of breath but grinning, appeared to be a young and very bright-eyed Tamil boy, albeit with little antlers pointing up out of his tawny hair, a lion's tail protruding through his dhoti trousers, and fangs like a baby saber-toothed tiger. "Good morning, Miss Nonomiya!" He put his hands together and offered a bow in salutation. "I worried it might be too good to be true when I felt you had returned to our world again, but I'm so glad to see it isn't!"

Nonomiya returned the gesture, and let out a little laugh at his exuberance. "Yali! It's good to see you again too! Is it just my imagination, or have you grown since I last saw you? You haven't been leveling up without me?"

As for Kazuma, it felt good to see her old partner smile genuinely once again. Watching the two of them together, she could imagine how Nonomiya had been in life, entirely in her element in her flight attendant's uniform, reassuring a nervous child or giving one their first pair of pilot's wings. Knowing that she was not the cause of that smile, however, did cause Kazuma a sharp pang of guilt.

Guilt she was happy to hide behind a smile and a bow of her own when Nonomiya said, "You remember my partner, Kazuma, don't you?"

Partner, Kazuma thought. _Not "old partner." Not "former partner." Maybe we are making some headway._ But then, they were partners for as long as this operation lasted. Didn't mean they still would be when it was over.

"Of course!" Yali sang. "Miss Kazuma let me fire her hand cannon last time she was here—"

"Whoa, now, Yali," Kazuma said with a nervous laugh, "I thought we agreed that would be our little secret."

The boy cast a not- _too_ -guilty look at his mistress, hoping that confession wouldn't get him in trouble.

But Nonomiya just bent down with a hand on his shoulder, and said, "Would you do us a favor, Yali? We came here because one of our colleagues sneaked into your world when he wasn't supposed to, and we need to find him before anything bad can happen to him."

"You mean Tsuzuki's friend? Hisoka? Everyone is talking about him in the Capital. Genbu's placing bets on what kind of havoc he's going to wreak this time."

That sounded about like Genbu to Kazuma. If anyone understood the phrase "A fool's soon parted from his money," it was that sneaky old box turtle. She was rather fond of Yali, and just hoped for his sake he was not fool enough to take Genbu's bet.

"Then maybe you can run along ahead of us and see if any of Tsuzuki's shiki will talk to us?" said Nonomiya. "Maybe even help us? Anyone you can possibly find who has information on Kurosaki's whereabouts. It's very important we find him, Yali."

Yali saluted. "Leave it to me, Miss. I'll be as quick as lightning!" he said as he changed into his other form, a creature with the head, upper body and tail of a young lion, but the antlers, tusks and hoofed hindquarters of a muntjac. It might have been an intimidating combination, but given his age and size, came off more cute than dangerous. Nevertheless, Kazuma knew he was capable of great feats of defensive magic, should her partner need to call on him for those abilities.

"Hand cannon?" Nonomiya said after Yali had taken off in Tenkuu's direction, trying to sound more cross than she managed to look.

Kazuma had to chuckle at the memory. "So I taught him how to fire a pistol. The kid was curious. I can't help it if shiki are a few centuries behind in their technology."

Nonomiya just sighed at that and shook her head. "You're determined to be a bad influence, aren't you?"

"Mm, no. No, I like to think I'm more like the cool aunt who spoils the kid rotten."

But Kazuma's charming grin was lost on her partner, who was looking the other way anyway. She knew Nonomiya's mood had nothing to do with Kazuma letting some baby shikigami fire her handgun. And it was going to take a lot more than jokes and sexy smiles to patch things up this time.

* * *

Things were starting to feel so routine around his new office that Imai didn't think twice about answering his phone when it rang with a nonchalant "Y'ello. Imai here."

" _Why didn't you mention you were killed by a god!_ "

He almost fell out of his seat before remembering the squawky voice on the other end belonged to one of the Gushoushin. And that, in fact, he had been expecting some sort of answer from them. "Can you hang on one second?" he said as he hurried out into the hallway. Didn't need any of his coworkers overhearing any sensitive information.

"You could have told me you were killed by Rikugou," the Gushoushin told him when Imai felt he was safe from prying ears. "It would have saved me a lot of time searching for an explanation for what you're experiencing."

Imai had just thought it went without saying. The Gushoushin were keepers of the records, after all. Wouldn't his death record be the first place they checked? "Rikugou?" Wasn't that an obscure old word for the universe? "Is that what that big bird thing that blew up in front of me is called?"

Gushoushin sighed. But, really, how was Imai supposed to put it any more elegantly when he was the one in the dark, here? "Rikugou's a god, comes from another dimension, one that humans made thousands of years ago—"

"This isn't some ancient alien shit you're trying to lay on me, is it? 'Cause Asai's been trying to convince me of this stuff for years—"

"No. Shut up." Gushoushin growled. Though it was about as intimidating as a growling kitten. "He's a god, alright, known as the Astrologer, and among his powers are making time stand still and seeing the future. Which explains why you've been having premonitions. Some of his abilities probably transferred to your soul by accident when he killed you."

Killed. He just kept using that word. And with each casual repetition of it, it seemed like Imai was expected to feel more and more numb. Instead, he felt more and more like some injustice had been done against him. Perhaps only accidentally. But wasn't that in some ways worse, if the person or thing that had killed him hadn't even meant to do it?

"So, what do I do now?" he asked. "I assume there's some magical cure, or—"

" _What?_ No, there's no _cure!_ This is what you are now! Honestly, I don't know why you aren't more grateful. These powers are your tools as a shinigami. Learn to use them!"

Apparently Gushoushin didn't think there was anything more to be said, as he ended the phone call rather abruptly.

And as Imai shut his phone and leaned his head back against the wall, feeling unsatisfied by the lack of clear answers, he had to wonder if there was something wrong with him that he couldn't feel what Gushoushin apparently thought he should. That his new gifts were a tool, or even a blessing. Maybe he would have felt differently if he could go on believing his death had been merely an unfortunate accident. But if some force, some individual were actually responsible, then didn't they deserve to be brought to justice for his death? Didn't _he_ deserve to see them face some sort of punishment?

He wished Kazuma were still here to help him navigate these feelings, as he was sure he couldn't be the only shinigami who had ever had them. But she was off on some secret mission that his chief didn't seem to want to give out too many details about. Something about bringing in an agent from another department who might have gone rogue. That was all he would say.

"I didn't mean to eavesdrop, Detective Imai, but I thought I recognized that voice. A call from Gushoushin?"

Speak of the Devil. . . . While Imai had been mulling through his conflicted feelings, Chief Todoroki had sneaked up beside him. Imai knew Kazuma was unnerved by the man, but personally he had yet to sense anything worthy of suspicion. Maybe it was the chief's military manner that put Imai at ease, his stolidity and the no-nonsense way he had with his agents. He made Imai feel like he was a detective still. "No, never mind I asked," Todoroki said. "If it's a private matter, I won't pry—"

"Actually, it's probably time I informed you, sir. Seeing as it may affect my performance."

Todoroki looked on with interest, but waited for Imai to feel comfortable saying what he needed to say.

"I've been experiencing some strange things," Imai confessed in a low voice, "premonitions to be precise. Gushoushin was helping me make sense of them. He—er, it is 'he,' right?—seems to think they're tied to the manner of my death."

"And he's probably right. That would be the most likely explanation, seeing as the shikigami who killed you is known to manipulate time."

"Shikigami?" Imai narrowed his eyes. "Not just any old god, then."

At which Todoroki looked as though he had said too much. Imai wanted to reassure him, though, in this matter more information was definitely better. "Didn't Gushoushin say?" said the chief. "Oh, well. Perhaps he thought you already knew that bit. Or perhaps he wanted to protect the identity of the shiki's master. They don't summon themselves or attack without orders, after all."

"What are you saying? Someone gave the order to attack that killed me? Who?"

Imai's growing anger must have started to show in his voice. Todoroki decided he had already said too much, but he shot Imai a sympathetic smile, and clapped a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You're the detective, Detective. I'm afraid that is one mystery you have to figure out for yourself. Then you'll truly know what it means to be a shinigami."

* * *

". . . Hisoka? Hey. Hisoka. _~Time to wake up~_ "

Feeling disoriented and like the whole inside of his mouth had been wrapped in plastic, Hisoka lifted his head off his arms, resting on his desk. When had he gotten there? It seemed like he was missing some time. Not to mention, he never fell asleep like this at work. Could he have blacked out?

A similar thought must have occurred to Tsuzuki, who smiled an impish smile down at him. "Still haven't recovered from the Count's party, hmm? I told you to take it easy, but you insisted you never got drunk."

"I don't. Because I don't drink. _You're_ the one who's always saying you don't get drunk, _while_ you're hammered usually—"

But Tsuzuki wasn't listening. In fact, it felt like Hisoka was talking to himself for all Tsuzuki was paying attention. "Anyway," his partner said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder, "I just came over here to get you. Looks like we've got another case, and there's castella in the conference room. Just what you need for that hangover."

Hisoka started to remind him that sugar would only make it worse, and besides, he wasn't hungover; but Tsuzuki had already moved on, and Hisoka had no choice but to follow him to the conference room. There appeared to be a meeting—of sorts—already in session, as Watari was showing off another one of his inventions, a scary-looking contraption that seemed designed to make fingers disappear from their bodies (though, as usual, that was probably just an unfortunate side effect), and Tatsumi was chastising him for wasting the department's time and money on it.

"Ah, glad to see you two could finally join us," Konoe said over the other two's bickering, while Hisoka poured himself a cup of tea and Tsuzuki helped himself to a couple slices of cake. "Looks like we've got another string of suspicious deaths on our hands, and I need you two to look into it."

As Konoe went over the macabre details and photographs, a theme started to emerge that pointed to someone with sadistic tendencies and medical experience. Tsuzuki echoed what Hisoka was thinking when he piped up with his suspicions that Muraki might have something to do with the killings. Apparently that was the thought on Konoe's mind as well; he urged them both to be extremely cautious as they got up to go.

Before Hisoka could follow Tsuzuki back through the door, however, Tatsumi stopped him with a short: "A moment, Kurosaki?

"Before you get too far into this case," he said when the two of them had some privacy, "I need you to do something for me."

Hisoka was expecting him to ask something to the effect that he take extra care of Tsuzuki on this investigation, but instead the secretary told him: "It's urgent these files get up to Judgment," and so saying, dumped a stack of them into Hisoka's arms. "I would go myself, but Watari's blown a huge hole out of our budget with this latest contraption of his, and the matter needs my immediate attention. And, ah, speaking of budgets, I'm afraid you and Tsuzuki will have to make due with cheaper accommodations on this case—"

"It's not a problem," Hisoka assured him, though he was sure he would be getting an earful about it from Tsuzuki the moment they arrived at their hotel—or hovel, as the case may be.

That let Tatsumi breathe somewhat of a sigh of relief, and Hisoka left him, heading off through the corridors toward the Judgment Division's offices.

It was only once he got to that section of the building complex, which was teeming with Judgment officers, demons, and the occasional deceased soul wandering around trying to find out where to get processed, that Hisoka realized he had completely forgotten to ask Tatsumi _where_ in Judgment he was supposed to take the files.

He asked around, pushing through crowds that were all too busy to watch where they were going or shield their thoughts, and eventually got a tiger-headed demon seated at a security desk to direct him. "Elevator," it said with a paw pointing the way, "fourth floor."

But as soon as Hisoka stepped into the elevator, he was hit by a strange and uncomfortable thought. One which he had no way of supporting, but which he felt settle like an anxious knot in his gut nonetheless. That this elevator might not actually go to the floors that matched the buttons on the wall panel. That it might have a mind of its own, or go horizontally as well as vertically. That it might not even be restricted to the floors of this building at all.

And while he was silently freaking out, other passengers came and went in the car, none seeming to have any trouble reaching their destinations. Perhaps it was only the feeling of gravity, pulling on him when the elevator car rose, that had caused that nervous feeling in his gut. When Hisoka was alone in the car again, he pressed the button for the fourth floor. And was surprised when, after a few seconds, he actually reached it, without anything strange happening.

But before he could debark, Terazuma stepped into the elevator with a casual "Oh hey, Kurosaki," blocking Hisoka's egress and pressing the button for another floor.

"I needed to get out there," Hisoka tried to protest, but the car was already moving again. "I have to deliver these files so I can start investigating my case. People are dying—"

"I know," Terazuma sighed. "What else is new, am I right? Another day in paradise. Here, lemme see those." He grabbed a few off the top of Hisoka's stack, paging through them while he hummed around the unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. "Yeah, you need to photocopy these before you drop them off. Didn't nobody tell you?"

"N-no?" Hisoka could only say dumbly. "Why?"

"Well, it's not going to do you any good handing them in if you don't make copies first. Hey, since you're going that way," Terazuma said as the thought just occurred, "would you mind making a few for me while you're at it? I told Kannuki I'd take care of it, but seeing as the Gushoushin _really_ don't want me stepping foot in the library, something about only letting in people who respect books . . ."

"Why don't you just use the copy machine in our office?" Hisoka asked, but Terazuma didn't seem to hear him. "I mean, where do they get off assuming I don't respect books?" he went on obliviously. "Just because I had a little accidental explosion, and it was that jerk Tsuzuki's fault to begin with. . . .

"Anyway, you don't mind, do you, kid? I'd be really grateful." And without even waiting for an answer, Terazuma added his own paperwork to Hisoka's stack, and gave Hisoka a chummy little slap on the back before he disappeared.

Hisoka didn't know whether to grit his teeth or sigh. It felt like he was never going to get started on this case. People's lives might be on the line, souls that didn't have to die that he could still save if he and Tsuzuki left now. But here he was, stuck running errands for his coworkers. Well, if he had to go to the library anyway, maybe he could enlist the Gushoushin's help with making copies while he and Tsuzuki started investigating. Surely the brothers would understand the urgency of the matter.

But as he was nearing the library, a feeling overwhelmed Hisoka that was so sudden and inexplicable, he had to stop and brace his shoulder against the wall, just to try and clear his head enough to make sense of it.

There was a door wedged into that familiar hallway that had not been there before. Though he could hear nothing from inside, something beyond that door tugged at Hisoka, as if there were a black hole spinning at its center. The curiosity to open it and see what was inside simply would not leave him alone. And when Hisoka did open it a crack, what he glimpsed was a darkened, empty room the size of a planetarium. No way there was room enough in the building to permit that kind of space to exist. Yet, there it was. And, for some reason Hisoka could not explain, he was terrified of going in. He only knew, with every fibre of his being, that death awaited him in the center of that room, one even more permanent than what had brought him here.

Even though he could see with his own eyes that the room was empty of any inhabitants, still he thought he felt a presence there. One which would only reveal itself the moment the door was closed behind Hisoka. One which would be the last thing he ever saw—

"There you are!" said Tsuzuki, hurrying up the hallway toward him.

Wanting to protect him from what was inside the room, Hisoka quickly shut the door.

"Are we gonna get going on this case or what?" Tsuzuki asked. And while Hisoka fumbled for an explanation involving making copies and transporting documents, Tsuzuki linked his arm in Hisoka's and dragged him away. "First off, we need to get your tickets."

"Tickets? As in train tickets?" That was almost as ludicrous as the death room. As shinigami, they never needed to take public transportation, as teleportation was not only near-instantaneous, it was free.

"Not train tickets, silly. You need to get the proper documents and I.D. to get into this school." And at Hisoka's confused look: "Where we'll be investigating undercover? Honestly, did you even look at our case file?"

But the line they got into to supposedly get the right documentation turned out to be the lunch line in the cafeteria. And when Hisoka pointed this out, along with the fact that they were wasting time, Tsuzuki chastened him: "Nonsense. This'll only take a minute. Besides, you can't fight evil on an empty stomach!"

The rest of the day unfolded very much along similar lines. Hisoka would be whisked or sent off in one direction, told he had to stand in this line or accomplish that errand before he could teleport off to the living world, only to be redirected just as soon as he got there. All the while being reminded what he already knew too well: that timing was of the essence, and he had to investigate this case before anyone else got hurt. He tried to teleport to the living world himself, to no avail. Even a walk through the grounds outside had invariably led back indoors. Always toward some higher-priority item of business that he could not ignore. And always past that doorway, with its dreaded death room just inside it, which he desperately wanted _to_ ignore.

He felt as though he had walked for miles, seeing parts of the Judgment Bureau's complex of buildings that he hadn't seen in years, or that were altogether new. But he hardly had a moment to slow down. There was always something else that needed his attention, somewhere that he _had_ to be. It was like being trapped in a nightmare.

 _Wait a second. Am I having a nightmare? Am I dreaming all of this? If that's the case, I should be able to just wake up. So why do I feel like I already_ am _awake?_

No sooner had the thought popped into Hisoka's head than he noticed the hallway he had walked down a hundred times before suddenly came to a dead end where there should have been a T. Had he merely gotten turned around? Been so lost in thought he had forgotten where he was going? No, he was sure the hall didn't end here, and the door that had appeared at the end of it should have been a blank wall.

Yet there he was, standing less than twenty paces from yet _another_ door, in yet another part of the building, that should not have existed. In a hallway that appeared to be having a problem with its power. The fluorescent lights overhead blinked and struggled to stay lit, and the ones at the end of the hall had gone out completely, shrouding the door that stood there in dark shadow.

 _As if someone doesn't want me to go through it._

Which was all the reason Hisoka needed to check it out. When he reached the door, he noticed an exit sign mounted above it, but the light in that was also out. And when he tried the handle, he found it was locked. Nor would it respond to any attempt of his to unlock it. When he tried to charm the lock open, the handle gave him a sharp shock. So he placed the side of his head to the door instead, and concentrated, hoping to hear anything on the other side of it. But the only sound that came back to him was a low hum, resonating through the door itself and lulling him into a state of restfulness, of forgetfulness. He couldn't remember why he had come down here, but it felt like there had been an important reason. . . .

"Well, well. What's this, boy? Wandering about where we don't belong? Have we still not learned our lesson?"

Hisoka spun at the sound of that voice at his ear—that voice that he should not have heard here, in Meifu, of all places. His heart leaped in conditioned panic when he saw Muraki standing over him, staring down at him with that condescending look in his eyes that spoke of the most vile, evil intent. Hisoka instinctively tried to back away, but he was trapped against a door that would not open.

Still, he willed himself to remain calm. _This is a dream. It's just a dream. He can only hurt me if I let him._ But if that was true, why couldn't he wake up from this nightmare, no matter how he tried? "What are you doing here, Muraki?"

Muraki narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing Hisoka. "I would ask you the same question. This level is restricted, and you don't have the proper clearance. One would have to wonder if you weren't up to something."

"I meant, what are you doing _here_ , in Enma-cho? It isn't possible for you to get in! Unless . . ." There were a couple explanations to choose from, none of which meant anything good. Either Muraki had found some loophole into the Land of the Dead that Enma didn't know about, or someone from the inside had invited him in. Or else, even less appealing—

"Hey, Hisoka, I think I finally got everything squared away and we can head out any time you . . ."

Tsuzuki trailed off, blinking when he saw Muraki leaning over his partner. Hisoka could see the change come over his partner's face, how Tsuzuki's jaw clenched and his energy did a complete U-turn into negative territory. "Get away from him, Muraki!" he said as he stomped forward. "You've got some balls showing your face here. You know this isn't your department!"

 _Department? . . ._ was all Hisoka could think numbly, as he watched Muraki close the distance and seize Tsuzuki in a dance hold in mid-stride. "Why, Tsuzuki," the doctor cooed while Tsuzuki blushed and tried to worm out of his grasp, "no need to be jealous on the boy's account. You know my affections have only ever been for you alone."

And as Hisoka watched Tsuzuki's will to free himself start to waver, a wave of anger and disgust and, yes, even jealousy rose up inside his own person that he felt he could barely contain. "Would one of you tell me what the hell is going on!" he yelled. But it was like yelling at a brick wall for all the attention the two paid him. "Why are you acting like Muraki works here!"

"I warned you what would happen if he died," said Natsume. Or rather, said his voice, coming from a calico cat who had appeared out of nowhere and was wearing his glasses.

Never mind that K, or some version of her, was talking to him in words he could understand. The very idea that Muraki was working for Enma, a shinigami himself, on their same side, whom Hisoka would have to cross paths with and act civil to on a regular basis for the rest of his afterlife, filled Hisoka with such insurmountable hopelessness for his own future that he couldn't stand it.

In fact, he _wouldn't_ stand for it. Hisoka had had quite enough of this. And now that he was certain he was dreaming—it had to be, that was the only way any of his craziness made sense—he was determined to get himself out of here. Or, barring that, seize control of this damned nightmare until whatever had a hold on his mind finally broke and released him.

He raced back down the hall, past Muraki and Tsuzuki locked in their hateful embrace, leaving talking-K behind, back towards that room that had filled him with such existential fear before. He was still inexplicably terrified of it, that certainty of death still lingering as fresh with him as when he had first felt it, but somehow he knew that that room was the key to all of this craziness. Somehow that room, and whatever malevolent force was contained within it, was his answer to all this. Either he would meet his ultimate end, or he would find salvation. Then again, perhaps in this dream world, with its dream-logic, those two were not mutually exclusive. Maybe he had to die in order to escape.

Never had the offices of the Judgment Bureau felt so like a labyrinth as they did now. He must have taken half a dozen wrong turns before arriving back in the hallway where he had encountered the mysterious room. But the doorway had vanished. Only the ones he remembered from real life remained.

 _The elevator!_ Yes, that had to be it! He had sensed its power before, its potential to take its passengers wherever it chose, not merely where they intended. Perhaps it would take him to wherever that mysterious room had relocated to. In any case, Hisoka had to try. He didn't know how else to get out of here.

He only hesitated the moment the elevator doors opened, waiting for Hisoka to step in. This was it. The moment those doors closed around him, anything could happen. He could end up going anywhere in the Judgment Bureau, or in Enma-cho—might even end up in a different plane in space or time. But he had to take that chance. He got in. But before he could push a floor button—or even read them, as there was no order to them whatsoever—the elevator car took off on its own.

"I know what you're doing," Hisoka said.

The elevator did not answer.

"It isn't going to work. You're trying to make me forget what I came here for, make me think that that," Hisoka indicated the farce of his office behind him, "is where I belong, that you can keep me trapped there indefinitely. But none of that was real." And he refused to believe in any of its twisted, fun-house-mirror reflection of his own life any longer.

No sooner had he voiced that than Hisoka could feel some force push back against his mind. Not unlike how the walls of the many-sided coffer-walled room had slowly closed in on him. What had seemed a mystery to Senrima now seemed so clear to him that he felt foolish for not guessing it before. He understood how this place could be called a fortress. It did not need an army to keep intruders out, only to pit the mind against itself, and let a person's own anxieties and jealousies and the monotony of their day-to-day existence become a prison in their own right. One a person could wander in circles in forever. The fortress was trying with all its might to magnify and multiply all those tiny little doubts and fears that ran always in the background of his mind, and make him forget what he had come here to do.

But Hisoka refused to forget. He had come too far to do so. If this was indeed a dream, he would bend it to his will. He told the elevator, "I command you take me to Rikugou," and did not even entertain no as an answer.

* * *

He wasn't sure what he had expected to find when he reached his destination. A Rikugou beaten and bloody, perhaps, or manacled and chained in heavy iron. Naked and humiliated, or wrapped up tight like a patient in an insane asylum's padded cell.

The man who sat in lotus pose in the center of the room resembled an ascetic monk, dressed in simple but well-worn gi and trousers, like hospital pajamas, which looked to have been made for a slightly smaller man. It had been easy for Hisoka to overlook how imposing a figure Rikugou actually cut; his long hair and voluminous coats had a way of shrinking the man beneath them down to more human proportions. But the long braid was gone now, his hair shaved down to stubble. Nothing to hide the pair of eyes set into his forehead behind. Even his glasses were gone.

It dawned on Hisoka that his captors did not need to beat or strip Rikugou to humble him. They had robbed him of the signs of his power. A fitting punishment for losing control of his own strength. If not for the extra pair of eyes, there would be nothing to indicate he was a shikigami at all.

While Hisoka was studying the man, his own arrival did not go unnoticed. Rikugou looked up from his meditations.

"Master Kurosaki." Relief and affection lit up his face—for all of one moment, before they were replaced by something darker. "You should not have come."

"Why?" Now that he was here, now that he was within reach of his goal, Hisoka could not help himself. He strode swiftly toward Rikugou's side. "If I'd known they were going to do this to you, I would have fought tooth and nail to get here sooner—"

" _Stop!_ Do not cross the circle or every being within a hundred li loyal to Sohryuu will descend upon this place!"

Hisoka stood still in mid-step. Now that he was close, he could see that it was a large bronze disk set into the floor that Rikugou was seated upon. Engravings with ancient characters surrounded it, like some sort of summoning circle. A hollow column of light rose just beyond its outer edge, what at first Hisoka had mistaken for sunlight catching on motes of dust. But no sunlight penetrated the chamber.

A few more steps and he would have crossed that light. Would it have repelled him? Hurt him, or worse? Or hurt Rikugou? He was not ready to find out.

"Sohryuu imprisoned you here," he said. Not a question. Hisoka didn't feel he needed to ask. "He did this to you, didn't he? Cut your hair, too? What, did he enlist Touda and Suzaku to help him?"

Rikugou's downward gaze was answer enough. He cringed at Hisoka's accusation of his colleagues, but his emotions did not contradict Hisoka, who knew that Tsuzuki's most loyal shiki would not be pleased, to say the least, with what the astrologer had done.

But then Rikugou surprised him: "It was my choice."

"I don't believe that for a minute—"

A calmly raised hand silenced him. "Nevertheless, it is true. Despite what you might think of Sohryuu, I asked to be sent here, Master Kurosaki," Rikugou said, meeting Hisoka's eyes again, "so it could not be said about me that I was completely out of control, lost to reason, and a danger to others. But more than that, it is only what I deserve. What I did to you," he gritted out, as though he needed to force words that resisted being said, "is unforgivable—"

"What you _almost_ did," Hisoka corrected him.

But Rikugou shook his head. "What I _did_. I attacked you, to whom I had sworn myself—even if it was unintentional, even if I couldn't control it. In many ways, that makes it worse. I could have destroyed you, I almost did, and either it is an inexcusable weakness or an unpardonable offense. Either way, I betrayed my master—not just one, but two, in the same instant. So yes, this is only the start of what I deserve, for the _hubris_ in me, believing I _could_ serve two masters at the same time—"

"You only did what I asked you to do. The fault is mine—"

" _No_. It is mine. _I_ was your guardian. It was for me to obey—to focus my power and, at your will, aim it—and I failed you. I turned it against you. I broke that most sacred of vows and tried to destroy you. Not because I wanted you gone, either, but because I simply could not contain myself once my power was unleashed. And is it not worse, to succeed at what one intends _not to do_? For that, I must pay the price. And I have chosen to remain here, in this fortress, and contemplate my actions. Is it so much to ask to be left to it in peace?"

The column of light may have been a barrier between them, but it allowed his emotions to roam free. Or perhaps Hisoka was simply more attuned to them than he had been his last visit. The guilt that saturated this place—it was as though the very stones had been soaked in it.

He sat down just outside the circle. If Rikugou intended to stay, then Hisoka would too. They would just have to see who caved first.

"You know how this place works, don't you? It'll just make you wander around in your worst nightmare without end. You don't honestly expect me to believe you would _choose_ to relive the worst decisions you ever made, day after day."

"It is only fitting," Rikugou said in a tone that made it clear he wished Hisoka would just go away and leave him to it. "This place and I have negotiated a fair deal."

A deal where he could run away from his problems without actually facing them, Hisoka thought. No matter how many times you went over your regrets in your head, no matter how many angles you examined them from, the only thing that truly mattered was making sure they were never allowed to happen again. He would have thought Rikugou, in his infinite wisdom, would have learned that lesson long ago. "That changes nothing. I fought hard to get this far. I was nearly crushed to death just getting here, a couple times, and I'm not leaving empty-handed. My friends fought hard—"

"Friends?"

"K, my coworker, and Senrima. Kijin." Rikugou "ahh"ed at the latter two names, at least. "They stuck out their necks to help me get here," Hisoka said, "and I'm not going to let their efforts be in vain. I came to break you out, and I'm not leaving here until I do."

Rikugou chuckled at that, albeit bitterly. "I feared you might say that."

 _Feared? What the hell am I missing?_ "The way I see it, there are two ways we can go about this. Either I can try to pick whatever this supernatural lock that's holding you is, and fight my way back out when the cavalry comes to make sure you stay here. I've already beat this fortress at its own games, I'm confident I can do it again. Or you can just tell me how to free you, and we can be far from here before any help arrives."

He should have known it wouldn't be that simple when Rikugou shook his head. "I don't think you understand. I am here not because I cannot leave, but because I mustn't. Those challenges you faced along the way—who do you think designed them?" Now that he truly thought about it, Hisoka could not deny that there was a similarity between Rikugou's initial test and all the hurdles this place had thrown in his way. "This fortress's mind bears some of the blame, of course. It helped me to put my plans into motion. It agreed to try and stop you, but it can only do so much. It was never designed to be a force of evil in this world."

"It tried to kill me."

"Hardly. If anything, it pulled its punches too soon and too easily to turn away someone determined to penetrate its secrets. But I could do nothing to alter its nature. I can see the future, Kurosaki. I knew there was a high probability you would try to come for me, to set me free. I had to at least try to turn you away, for your own good."

"My own good?" Hisoka cried. He shot up onto his knees, and remembered the barrier just in time. "What part of you abandoning me when I need you most is for my own good!"

Hisoka's words seemed to shock the shikigami—perhaps he had not thought of what he was doing as abandonment—but Rikugou hardened his resolve. "I merely believe that perhaps you were better off without me. Our experiment was a failure. The outcome was nearly fatal to you—and surely was to others, others who did not deserve or ask for that fate. The burden of their deaths is on my soul, and on yours. I should have foreseen the consequences of answering your call, and yet I did not. Or, perhaps I had some indication—after all, I knew what you intended to do with me—yet I allowed my feelings for you to cloud my judgment and ignored the warning signs. Still, I have the wisdom to say enough is enough. Only a fool would want to repeat the same mistake—"

"Then call me a fool. But I'm not the one who'd rather dream about the mistakes he's already made than start over anew. I need you, Rikugou." How to convey the truth of that to him? For Hisoka felt it with all the strength and certainty in his soul.

Or was Rikugou correct when he accused: "You need my power. Or, rather, desire it. You are addicted to power—any that you believe might help you in your revenge. In that, you are no better than your own demon."

So that was the purpose of that test, making him confront Muraki. It wasn't about the man, so much as the pain and anger his torture and murder still caused Hisoka. Not to mention, the pain and anger of seeing Tsuzuki capitulate to that man's will every time he had the opportunity to strike him down.

And why shouldn't Hisoka want revenge for that? More than that: justice. It was only natural to want justice for what had been done to him. It was only human, and only right. Why should he expect a god to have even the faintest idea of what that was like, to want the one responsible for ruining your life to suffer for it? These gods, these shikigami, whose petty squabbles Rikugou and Senrima both seemed to see themselves as above—what did any of them know about _true_ pain? Their pride was bruised, their aims foiled—they slayed one another and, in most cases, were re-spawned like players in a video game. They knew nothing of the burden he carried, the burden that was his daily existence.

And Hisoka wanted to throw that in Rikugou's face—defy his accusations with a big "So what". So fucking what. He deserved the right to bring Muraki low. At least he deserved the right to try. And what were shikigami for, anyway? To obey. To do what they were told—kill who they were told.

As much as he wanted to, Hisoka didn't need to project those feelings onto Rikugou. They must have been clear on his face, because Rikugou could see just how on-the-mark his accusation had landed. He knew, as if _he_ were the mind-reader, how much Hisoka wanted to double-down on it—to be that greedy, selfish, tunnel-visioned human Rikugou told him he was.

Except to acknowledge that would also be to acknowledge that he was weak, at his very core. And for all he hated shiki pride, Hisoka was ashamed of anyone thinking he was guilty of his own.

"The records were mistaken," Rikugou said, head bowed. "We are utterly, irreconcilably, incompatible."

Funny, Hisoka thought. He could remember saying something very close to that to Tsuzuki, some years ago. And for all it had been right, he had been dead wrong.

"I don't believe it."

And Hisoka wasn't just saying that. With every revolution of those words in his mind, he was more and more sure. They weren't incompatible. Rikugou may have wanted to convince himself they were, but he gave his true feelings away. "You knew when you first felt me come into this world that we had a connection."

The clues had been there from the start. Rikugou hadn't just saved Hisoka from a Sohryuu on the warpath. He had taken Hisoka under his wing. There had to have been a reason.

"You saw that we had a future together," Hisoka kept at it, his voice and his certainty growing with every word. " _That's_ why you sought me out! _I_ didn't go looking for _you_! You knew all along that I would one day have you as my guardian, that's why our paths kept crossing. Because you made sure they would. You set me up to challenge you—you made us happen! If you don't consider that compatibility, then what is it?"

"You're right," Rikugou shot back, drowning out Hisoka's voice with his, as though volume alone might win him the argument. "I _did_ believe that what I had seen in the stars indicated a strong connection between us, between our fates. And I _did_ seek you out, in part for to test that very possibility. But I did not read the signs correctly. I was wrong. So very wrong. And so many have already paid for it. You, nearly, with your very being.

"There is something I failed to mention to you when you won me as guardian."

The gravity in Rikugou's voice stopped Hisoka. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear it, but knew he had to. "What?"

"That you should have failed the test. The one I set for you the last time you were here. I felt it in you. The moment you gave up." And Hisoka knew precisely what he meant without him saying more. It was the moment he had truly felt the full weight of his guilt, and knew it was likely he would never see Tsuzuki again. He had found himself facing a future existence without the person he needed most in all the world in it, and the pain of that realization had been enough to make him want to die all over again.

And though it had been a temporary affliction, he had not known then just how lethal it could have been. _So, I should have died after all._ How close had he been, he wondered, to the sunbird's sharp claws and beak, to those tail feathers that scalded anything they touched? Without ever even knowing it.

"I should have killed you for it," Rikugou admitted. "Obliterated you. I did not want to, but it was my nature, the nature of the compact we enter into when we are challenged to guardianship. If we see a weakness, we strike. I tried to do it, but you were protected."

Hisoka started. "What do you mean, protected? By what?"

"I cannot say for certain. It would not reveal its true nature to me."

What disturbed Hisoka more than anything, though, was that Rikugou spoke of the thing as an agent, something conscious, willful. Was it too much to hope it had something to do with Muraki's curse—something Hisoka could potentially find a cure for? "What are you trying to say? That there was already something inside my head? Some sort of being?" A frightening thought struck him, but one that offered some hope at the same time. "Can parasitic shiki take over your body without your knowledge?"

But Rikugou shook his head. "It was not one of us. And yet it seemed not altogether unlike one of us."

"So, like a demon?" Hisoka wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer to that, but he had to ask.

Rikugou's answer didn't give him much reassurance. "Yes and no. It felt as though it was a part of you, intermingled with your physical makeup and yet its own separate consciousness. And still you have no knowledge of it?"

"I'm beginning to," Hisoka admitted. "Apparently after your powers backfired on me, this . . . thing, this whatever-it-is, was what saved me from being totally destroyed by the flames." He saw it again: the scales beneath his own burnt flesh, the eyes that should have been his eyes but weren't, and yet were at the same time. . . .

He shook his head. "Physically, I don't _feel_ any different than I ever did, but ever since that night, I've been having . . . dreams. Nightmares. The same ones I used to have when I was little. Much as I'd like to blame Muraki for this too, I'm not sure I can. I think it must have been there before I met him. Wherever I picked it up, it sounds like you think I'm possessed."

"I don't know if that would be the correct term for it. But there is something inside of you, part of you and still separate. It enfolded your soul within itself when I attacked. I found my energy . . . deflected." And as Rikugou thought back, an image developed in Hisoka's mind of some sort of dark egg, rough-textured and hard as an iron meteor. Constructed of continuously twisting coils. Perpetually irate—not unlike the righteous anger that drove Hisoka's quest for justice. "I think by protecting you, it was protecting itself."

At the time, Hisoka had felt like he was being strangled by its coils. Not exactly his definition of "protecting". The way Rikugou went on, he supposed he should have been grateful to that entity for saving him; but all he felt was a revulsive fear, a hatred for this thing that felt more like a burden he had never asked for than a blessing. _If it was trying so hard to save me, why put me through so much pain?_

"It doesn't matter."

Rikugou blinked up at him, his second pair of eyes opening a crack as though they too were in disbelief.

And Hisoka had to admit he surprised himself with that confession. "I've been giving this some thought on my way here. Ever since I learned that there might be this . . . this presence inside me. If it is something I carried over with me from life, and it's permanent, I'm going to have to learn to live with it. I might even have to face the possibility that . . . that I'm not entirely human."

Those last few words felt like they were coming out of someone else's mouth, such was Hisoka's disconnect from them. He should have been bothered by the idea.

Rikugou must have been thinking the same thing. "You don't deny it?"

"What good would denial do if it's true?"

That earned Hisoka a smile from the shikigami. "What good, indeed?"

"I could dwell on this—I could let the idea that some part of me is a god or a demon or a monster tear me apart until I no longer know who I am. Or I could accept it and move on. I saw Tsuzuki go through this same problem." And had a front-row seat to the existential crisis that ensued. Again and again. When did one say, that's enough? No more? When did one accept what he was, and the fact that he couldn't change it? "I've seen where fighting this sort of thing gets you, and I don't want to end up like him. Hating myself for all eternity."

"Tsuzuki carries a great deal of guilt," Rikugou said, as though by way of apology. "Some of it I'm sure is tied to what he is, but just as much to what he has done. You are not he, Kurosaki. You don't have to become him."

"Well, if I can't control who, or what, I am, I can at least control what I do about it. I need to know the truth. But I will not let the answer I find consume me. And that, I worry, I can't do alone."

Hisoka got back to his feet. He extended a hand to Rikugou in invitation, even if it was largely symbolic: He was careful not to extend it over the line of Rikugou's cage.

"I need you, Rikugou. I don't care if it's as my guardian or just a trusted friend who can help me figure all this stuff out. All I know is, I can't do this alone. And I can't just turn around and leave you here, either. I don't care if that's what you want me to do," Hisoka said to Rikugou's frustrated sigh. "You're here because of me—because _I_ couldn't control your power when I called on it. Don't I get a say in how you're punished, if I'm the one who committed the crime in the first place?"

Rikugou enjoyed a good laugh at that. Enough that Hisoka had to wonder if the shiki's failure in the living world had damaged him in some way. Hisoka hadn't meant what he said to be a joke.

"This will sound mad," Rikugou said, "you'll think that I have lost my marbles (as I believe the human expression goes) from my incarceration, but I will consent to this foolhardy plan of yours on one condition."

At that point, Hisoka would have agreed to just about anything to get Rikugou out of this place, and he said as much.

"I think you should challenge Kurikara again."

He was right. That did sound mad. And Rikugou called _Hisoka's_ plan foolhardy. " _You_ chewed me out for daring to think I could handle him! You told me I was reaching far beyond my power level!"

"But that was before I knew of this entity within you!" Rikugou got to his feet, all four eyes wide open and bright with the passion of his convictions. "Now I know how you were able to survive his fire the first time you came to our world. At least, I strongly suspect I do. And if I'm right, it means you can do it again."

"Now you _want_ to put me through that kind of pain? Is this your plan to free yourself from me once and for all? Send me on a suicide mission?" That earned him another little laugh, but Hisoka had been dead serious. "And what will Sohryuu say? He already believes we're both his enemies."

Rikugou sobered at that, though only a bit. "If we were both to go to Kurikara, he would only see that as confirmation of his fears, it is true. He cannot see that it is he who has betrayed the memory of the Emperor, that by trying to keep this realm in a condition of suspended animation he weakens it. But we can make him see."

"How!"

"That I don't know yet. I only know that if neither he nor Kurikara can be convinced, there is no hope left for us. One or the other must be willing to put aside old wounds and fight for our future."

"So you're giving up on Sohryuu? Just like that?"

Hisoka was unprepared for the hurt Rikugou hurled back at him. "It isn't 'just like that'! Do you not think I've tried everything in my power to reach him?" he said as he paced inside his circle, emotion thickening his voice. "Do you know how frustrating it is for a creature of reason to have that reason rejected at every turn? By one that I love as I would a brother or a spouse at that? But I do not _command_ Sohryuu, I am merely a peer and an inferior, and the one person who could succeed in changing his heart is nowhere in sight. Yes, Sohryuu is wrong, but I cannot blame him for it. I cannot blame him if he feels abandoned all over again. He has good reason to.

"Kurikara, on the other hand, has no master," Rikugou went on, deepening Hisoka's dread with every sentence. "He refuses to entertain the idea of being lorded over by a human. But that does not mean he is unattainable—only that he, in his pride and his superiority, _believes_ himself to be so. We already know from the records that you and he are compatible—"

"No. Absolutely not. It's too dangerous—"

"And the last two times you were here, it seemed you could not wait for an opportunity to look on the Dragon King. I remember how eager you were to speak to him, believing you could change his mind about his war—that you could convince him to assist you in your search for Tsuzuki."

"I was deluded!" Hisoka threw up his hands. "You just told me how close I was to being destroyed by _you_ , and now you think I should take on a god ten times more powerful?"

"More like a thousand," Rikugou said. And Hisoka need not have told him that wasn't helping. "But never mind the particulars. Kurikara can be convinced—"

"But _how?_ "

"He _must_ be convinced. Or else I must give up on any hope I still have that we can save our world." Rikugou heaved a great sigh. Then, as if some age-old question had at last been settled within him, he stretched himself to his full height. It made him look even stranger in the ill-fitting clothes, and shorn head. Drawn-out, like a crane. "I will prepare you for the confrontation to the best of my abilities, and I will accompany you to Kurikara's doorstep myself, as your faithful guardian. But you must agree to my terms, Master Kurosaki—"

"Just who's the master here?"

"You must agree, or I stay right where I am."

The powerful aura coming off the shiki and his mischievous smile were creeping Hisoka out, but what choice did he have? He had come here, against orders, to repair his relationship with Rikugou. If there still was a relationship capable of being repaired. That couldn't be accomplished so long as Rikugou was in this birdcage, this fortress of unending dreams and solitude. But to face Kurikara again felt like certain death.

Unless there was more to this madcap idea of Rikugou's than he was letting on. . . .

Still, it didn't sit well with Hisoka to think that perhaps _he_ was the pawn waiting to be put in play by a more powerful player. Even if that was exactly what he had come here to do to Rikugou.

There was just one problem. "I'll do it. I'll let you take me to Kurikara. But first we need to figure out how to get you the hell out of here." Because Hisoka had been studying the place while they talked, and he could find no sign of an exit. "Preferably in a way that doesn't alert an army to come after us."

"I'm afraid that cannot be avoided," Rikugou said.

And before Hisoka could do or say a single thing to stop him, he began to transform. His form elongated and expanded, giant wings of prismatic light unfolding to the width of the space. Klaxons sounded as the light barrier of his cell was shattered, scattering flares that Hisoka could not tell whether they were a part of the fortress or Rikugou himself. They blinded, like fireworks off diamonds, and Hisoka had to turn away for the sake of his stinging eyes.

And when the light dimmed, what was left was a great bird the size of an allosaur but far more elegant—part crane, part cockerel, with the tail of a peacock and wings of a swift. Plumage every color of the rainbow. Four eyes, red-orange like hot coals in his slate-blue face. If he was any less impressive this time it was only because he did not seem to lick flames or trail solar flares in his wake like he had in the living world. The shafts of his feathers shimmered like fiberoptic cables, and Rikugou glowed beneath them with an almost radioactive light, but at least it looked as though Hisoka could touch him and not be burned.

"Finding an exit," Rikugou's voice reverberated from the bird's throat, harmonizing with itself, "is no trouble at all. I told you I kept myself here of my own volition, did I not?" He folded his scaled legs under him and told Hisoka to climb onto the back of his neck, down between his shoulders.

"I thought your powers were taken from you as punishment." At least, Hisoka assumed that was why his hair had been cut.

"You thought they clipped my wings, did you?" A pleasant rumble ran through Hisoka as Rikugou chuckled. "My power cannot be diminished. It has merely been shackled. But the word of the one I serve can free it."

"Then blast us a way out of here!" Hisoka said. "That's an order!"

No sooner had the command left his mouth than Rikugou lashed out with his tail. The long feathers shot out like whips, or the tentacles of a squid, tearing at the ceiling. Alarms continued to wail around them, louder now, as though the fortress itself were protesting its own destruction. Hisoka threw up a barrier to deflect the chunks of stone and tile that rained down toward him, though Rikugou barely seemed to notice those that rolled off of his back. A bright shaft of sunlight shot down through the cupola like a laser beam, almost too intense to endure after so long in this underground world of almost total darkness.

But though Hisoka cringed under it, the light only seemed to reinvigorate Rikugou. Once enough of an oculus had opened up above their heads, he shot up through it and into the sky like a bullet fired from a gun. It all happened so fast that Hisoka's heart felt like it was being draggd down into his stomach. He grasped desperately for feathers to hold on to, squeezing one of Rikugou's vertebrae between his legs, praying he didn't fall off.

Down below them, a flock of tengu had been disturbed by the destruction. They must have been waiting for the two to emerge, perhaps alerted to this escape plan by those swallow-women whose home Senrima had destroyed. The tengu's black and violet and blue wings circled like so many crows, riling themselves into a mob. Hisoka could see the flashes of light off the tips of their halberds. He thought it best to warn Rikugou, if he hadn't already spotted them.

"They won't catch us," Rikugou said, putting his head into the wind.

And sure enough, as Hisoka watched, the little dark bodies grew smaller and fainter, eventually dropping out of sight. "Will they try to follow us? Hunt us down?"

"Undoubtedly. And once word gets back to the Capital, you can bet they won't be alone."

"But I thought the tengu didn't like dealing with dragons." Hisoka had received the impression on his first visit that they guarded their autonomy jealously, and were only reluctantly sympathetic to whomever they perceived as the winning side. They had that in common with the Peacekeepers of his world—or, at least, the Peacekeepers as they used to be, before Tsuzuki's disappearance seemed to have made zealots of them. Just like in Meifu, Hisoka supposed, loyalties in Gensoukai evolved. "Has something changed?"

"We all must do what we think is right in trying circumstances." Rikugou sounded pensive as he said so. Thinking of his own actions, no doubt, and how many of his comrades considered them acts of betrayal. "Even if we don't exactly like what we become in the process."

There was a sound like a crack of thunder, splitting the clear sky, and a whinny followed not a moment after. Hisoka looked toward the sound and saw Senrima galloping toward them on the air, K on her back. Hisoka hadn't given as much thought to what had become of them as he should have after they'd gotten separated, but he was relieved to see they too had made it out in one piece. He called out to them.

"I thought I saw some UFO come shooting out of that mountain hideout." That comment, apparently, was meant for Rikugou. "Wasn't sure I'd ever see the King of Birds flying over these skies again, but these are strange days we're living in. First the kirin, now you—"

"Kirin?" Rikugou said it in disbelief, and Hisoka told him, "We spotted one on the way to you. In the forest not a day's ride from the fortress."

Rikugou made a sound part sigh, part contemplation. And, perhaps, an ounce of regret. "If only we were headed the other direction. How Sohryuu would be consoled to hear the kirin have reappeared."

"You mean the prophecy about the Emperor," Hisoka said.

But if Rikugou heard him, he did not answer, as Senrima said at the same time: "And just which direction _are_ we headed in, good sir?"

"To the Floating Desert, and Kurikara—"

" _Eh?!"_ Senrima lost a little altitude at that revelation. But she recovered, with K clinging fiercely to her, pupils wide and hair all on end. "All that time in that cage must have rattled your bird brain! Have you gone mad, Rikugou?"

If Rikugou had been human, he would have been smiling that smile that seemed to say, _Oh, if you could see the things I see. . . ._ "Not mad, old friend. I have a plan."

"Oh yes, of course. That's a horse of a different color, isn't it? I feel _so_ much better knowing you have a _plan_ for getting us all killed." Senrima snorted what she thought of that plan, puffs of steam erupting from her nostrils.

* * *

 ** _More mythology trivia,_** _if anyone is interested. . . . So, for this story I've invented a shikigami (and career) for Nonomiya who isn't just named Yali, but is meant to_ be _a yali. Yali are temple guardians in southern Indian architecture, usually integrated into the carving of a pillar or rail. So the statues that attacked Hisoka's party in Chapter 16 are based on one yali motif (the gajasimha, which are also seen in Cambodian temples), and Nonomiya's shiki is based on another popular style of yali. I'm not sure if real yali are meant to be part muntjac or barking deer, but that's what the horns or antlers on the statues remind me of, and I think it makes for a cute combination. Seriously, muntjacs and asiatic lions need more love. I really need a fanart of this little guy. . . ._

 _ **Regarding Rikugou's animal form,** I don't think I ever wrote a footnote about this in **Gone to Earth** , so let's do it now. I've heard some different ideas for what he's supposed to be from other fans, but since there doesn't seem to be any picture or mention in the manga, I've decided to go with the houou bird, also known as fenghuang or Chinese phoenix. Which is a separate being from the Red Bird of the South, the firebird Suzaku (and which are both totally separate from the Western phoenixes). My reasoning is threefold. 1) Rikugou means "universe" or "cosmos" or "world" and is an astrologer with six eyes, and the houou is a celestial bird often said to be made up of parts of six different birds representing six heavenly "bodies". 2) The relationship between Rikugou and Sohryuu resembles the old-married-couple-like relationship between the fenghuang and dragon. 3) There's a picture of what might be a houou bird hanging in Rikugou's house (volume 9, page 160) (or might just be a Java green peacock; it's hard to tell). Ultimately I can't say it's anything more than a hypothesis of mine, but I've become rather attached to it, and hope that at least it works within the context of this humble fanfic._


	19. Treading water

_**Trigger warning** this chapter, for abuse. Sorry. Probably safe to assume this story's going to keep getting darker before it gets lighter._

* * *

"Demon!"

"Monster!"

"You better run! We'll kill you!"

Boys will be boys, he'd heard some adults say. When he tried to complain of their threats, their abuse, he just got shrugged away. They didn't believe children were serious when they made promises like that.

But he knew better. This wasn't just a game. He knew they meant every word.

Their rocks meant it, when they bit into Tsuzuki's back and his legs and his head. Their feet and fists meant it, when he tripped in the mud and couldn't run anymore, and they were able to catch up. They rained blow upon blow upon him until he thought they would never stop, and if anyone thought ten-year-old boys lacked the maturity or the wherewithal to kill, they weren't in Tsuzuki's shoes.

They hadn't done what Tsuzuki had done. Because he _had_ killed.

Of course the adults all believed it was an accident. That was what they told him, what they told themselves to make sense of how a child could push another child to the ground with enough force to crack his skull. They all knew Tsuzuki was the one under attack when it happened. They'd seen him pinned to the ground, feet slipping in the gravel and fighting for breath against the schoolyard bully sitting on top of him. And they'd done nothing.

Just like they did nothing when that boy finally let Tsuzuki up, and laughed off trying to smother the life out of him, and all the nasty things he had said about Tsuzuki's parents and how filthy his mother was for giving birth to a thing like him.

Only when he tackled that boy to the ground, screaming like an animal, did anyone do anything, and by then it was too late.

So, yeah, he knew he was dead the moment that kid's head hit the ground. He knew the other boys were going to exterminate him like a rabid dog terrorizing the neighborhood, the moment they got the chance, and he couldn't even say he didn't deserve it.

His skin stung from the stoning. His bones and his gut and everything ached from being kicked. He just wished they would hurry up and kill him already, he couldn't take any more of their abuse; but at some point, the fun must have run out for them. They laughed as they hurled a few more taunts of "Shit-eating demon!" or variations thereof his way, and left him to lie there, in a puddle of mud and blood and vomit, sometimes their piss if they were feeling particularly sadistic.

Maybe that's what was cruelest of all. That they didn't care enough for their deceased friend to finish the job and properly avenge his murder. It wasn't about what he deserved so much as it was about his humiliation. And they'd do it all over again tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that—he never knew when the hunt would begin. Just lived in constant fear that the next time might be the time they finally broke something inside him he couldn't come back from.

But it never happened. What his mother and sister called a blessing, he called a curse. He always healed from whatever those boys did to him. Much faster than was normal, and right.

Just proving their point. He _was_ a freak. He _was_ a monster.

Afternoon turned to evening, and by the sinking sun he'd drag himself home, and Ruka would seize him up in her arms and cradle him tightly to her, bruises and all, and tell him through her tears how sorry she was that this had happened to him again. He wished he could ask her if they could move again, but it was selfish to hope for that much. They had only moved to this village a few months ago, and it was hard for Mother to find work and for Ruka to finish her schooling if they couldn't stay in one place for very long.

So he stopped telling them what happened. He didn't want them to feel responsible for what they couldn't help. Though boys and their ideas only get worse as they get older, and one day they stopped insulting his mother's sexual habits and started insulting his own. Instead of rocks, they chased him with sticks. And when they caught him, before they beat him, they'd pull at his clothes.

 _Just to see how human—or inhuman—I really was. I envied the kids they called_ eta _, unclean. They treated those kids like animals, but at least they treated them like animals that deserved to live._

 _I remember I was so afraid they would kill me, but even if they could have, I doubt they would have done it. Then what would they have to play with? To humiliate, and torture, like they tortured me? Little cats and dogs? Cats and dogs don't beg you for mercy in a language you can understand when you kick them. Cats run away, and dogs just come back for more, licking your hand. There's no power to be gained in hurting a thing like that._

 _But if it's your peer. . . ._

 _Then you have the pleasure of seeing how you've hurt them on their face, every day. Then you know they go home to their beds, to the one place they should feel safe, and have nightmares about what you're going to do to them, every night. You know they understand just how much you hate them, and why. And you feel like a god, to have the fate and even the god-damned_ thoughts _of this human being in the palm of your hand, that you can crush any time you choose._

 _And if you're that poor soul on the receiving end, you grow up, thinking, Finally, this long nightmare is over! I survived, thank God, somehow I survived!_

 _Only to realize, it never ends. You never grow out of it. You never get to wake up._

At one end of town, there stood a small Western-style cottage with a white picket fence. Through his tears, as if he had wandered into a dream, or a fairy story, he saw bushes of white roses in the yard, and a kindly-looking man with graying hair and glasses behind them, trimming off the buds that hadn't yet opened.

It seemed like such a cruel thing to be doing, when they were trying so hard just to live their lives. So that's what he told the man.

Who said he understood. That was certainly how it looked. "But it doesn't really hurt the plant. If anything, it helps it to grow strong."

"It does?" With a sniffle, Tsuzuki wiped away the last of the tears. He didn't believe it.

The man smiled. "You see, right now the buds have to share all that food and water and sunlight equally, so when they open into blossoms, they won't get very big. But if you cut away some of the buds before they've had a chance to get too far along . . ." A few more well-placed snips, and flowers' heads fell to the ground. Like disgraced kings and queens. "Now the buds that remain have more food and water to split between them, and they can get a lot bigger. You see?"

He snipped off a bloom that was huge, and held it out for Tsuzuki to take. The perfume was intoxicating. So clean, like the scent of soap and sunshine that clung to the sheets when they were hung out to dry.

Then the man saw the cuts and bruises on Tsuzuki's face, and on his knees and hands. "What's this? Has someone been giving you a hard time?"

Tsuzuki didn't want to tell him about the other boys. It might only get them in trouble, and if it did, he'd pay for it twice over. But more than that, he didn't want the kind man knowing what they called him, if he hadn't heard it already.

"Well, I can't send you home to your folks like this," the man said as he wiped the dirt from his hands on a garden apron. "Let's at least get some disinfectant on those scrapes. I'll put on a pot of tea."

He was a doctor, it turned out, a physician. And when his mother had a relapse in her illness and collapsed, it was to that man that Tsuzuki ran.

"It's a good thing you called me," the doctor said when his work was finished, and Tsuzuki and Ruka saw him out. "I'm not sure who treated your mother before, but they didn't give her the medicine she needs."

"Can we call on you again?" Ruka said. She stood behind Tsuzuki, resting her hands on his shoulders.

But it was Tsuzuki's eyes the doctor met when he answered: "I would be happy to schedule regular check-ups on your mother's condition. And if she has another fit like this one, do not hesitate to send for me, any time of day or night.

"She certainly is a lucky woman to have a boy like you looking out for her, Asato-kun." And he gave Tsuzuki a wink. It made Tsuzuki feel warm inside, special, like he was valued enough to be confided in by so respected and kind a person as the doctor.

 _I really thought that, finally, I had someone I could call a friend. But a friend's just someone whose betrayal, when it comes, wounds you the deepest. Isn't it?_

* * *

How many afternoons after school did he while away at that house with the white picket fence? Not wanting to be caught out in the open, where the other boys could find and torment him. Not in any hurry to race home, either, never knowing in what condition he would find his mother's health that day. It was so much easier to pretend everything else in his life was fine and under control, if he was happily among the doctor's roses, gifted with the responsibility of trimming them and helping them grow strong.

Or blissfully full of cake or sandwiches and tea that the doctor plied him with, not reprimanding Tsuzuki if he wanted second or third helpings, but encouraging it, because he was a growing boy. And because, after all, the doctor lived alone in his house with no wife or children to spend time with him, let alone to share a cup of tea with.

Or listening to a record on the doctor's gramophone from Germany, paging through picture books he had of places all over the world, or drawings of every part of the human anatomy. The doctor expressed his surprise at first that Tsuzuki wasn't disturbed by those drawings—apparently some people got queasy if they thought too much about what was on their insides—but Tsuzuki said they didn't bother him. Not really. It was kind of exciting, actually, to learn what we are all made of, and realize that on the inside, we really aren't so different from one another. We pretty much have all the same parts in the same places.

The doctor smiled when Tsuzuki said that, and Tsuzuki thought that he would laugh. That's what adults usually did when he said something like that.

But the doctor said that Tsuzuki could be a doctor himself when he grew up, because "You truly are a thoughtful young man." And he sounded as though he truly meant it.

And when Tsuzuki asked nicely for another slice of cake after a day that Ruka couldn't afford to send him to school with a lunch: "You truly are a polite young man."

And when he talked about the rose bushes as his friends—because, other than the doctor, he really didn't have anyone else he considered his friend: "You truly are a kind young man."

And then: "You really are lovely, Asato-kun. Did you know that?"

How elated he had been to hear that. But he blushed, humbled by the word, because no one had ever called him lovely. Aside from his mother, perhaps, but she hardly counted. "Everyone always says I look weird," he confessed, seized by some irrational fear that he would get in trouble for telling. Or worse, that the doctor might take back his compliment and agree he was hideous. "Because of my eyes. They say I look like a monster."

But the doctor, by some miracle, could not have disagreed more. "Trust me," he said, "I have seen monsters, and you're the farthest thing from one there could ever be. If you want the truth—and, mind, this is just between you and me—I don't think I've ever met a person quite as beautiful as you."

"Really?" _That should have set off alarm bells. Maybe it did, but what could I do? No one else had ever said such nice things to me._

"Mm-hm." The doctor nodded. "And I would say your eyes absolutely have something to do with that. Everyone must be jealous, to say such cruel things. No one else has eyes like yours. But that's hardly a bad thing. If everyone had them, they wouldn't be so striking. Would you . . . would you mind if I took a picture of you?"

He'd only had one other picture taken that he could remember, of himself and Ruka and their mother, at a festival they attended, right before they moved to this town. Tsuzuki remembered the smell of the flash powder igniting as the shutter snapped, like gun smoke—or what he imagined gun smoke would smell like, anyway. It had been exciting. Of course he told the doctor it was alright. And to all the ones that came after, he never said no. It would have seemed ungrateful, somehow.

Though their afternoons together felt different after that. Not bad just . . . charged somehow. Like when a storm is building outside and you have to walk around carefully to keep from shocking yourself on everything you touch. The doctor seemed to have a little less to say, and he would look away when Tsuzuki met his eyes. His hand on Tsuzuki's shoulder when he sent him home would feel just a little bit heavier, and stay there just a little longer. And then the doctor suggested that maybe Tsuzuki ought to have a checkup. "With your mother's condition being what it is, I mean. We should make sure that it hasn't been passed on to you, and, well, since you said you've never had an examination before . . ."

The touch of the stethoscope to his bare chest made him jump and shiver, it was like a piece of ice. "I've never been sick before."

"Nonsense. Every child gets sick at least once."

But Tsuzuki shook his head, adamant. "Not me. Even when all the babies in our old town came down with fever, and a lot of them died, I never even got a chill. At least, that's what Ruka tells me. She had it pretty bad, herself."

The doctor tapped his back, so he could hear the resonance in Tsuzuki's ribcage. His fingers were cold. But it was the doctor who seemed to have a problem breathing evenly. "Well," he cleared his throat, "it's pretty unusual that a child, exposed to other sick children, would never catch _anything_ —"

"But I didn't!" He didn't want the doctor to think he was a liar.

"I didn't say I don't believe you, Asato. It's just unusual. Just further proof of how extraordinary you are."

Another snap of the shutters. Another photograph. One that Tsuzuki never saw.

Another afternoon, and the rainclouds were hanging heavy and low over the house with the white picket fence. It should have surprised no one when they couldn't hold their load any longer. The shower started innocently enough with a pattering of fat drops, but soon turned into a torrent that soaked the garden and everyone in it in seconds. They ran inside.

I can't send you home like that, the doctor told him, you'll catch cold. We have to get you out of these wet clothes. And Tsuzuki didn't argue with him, even if he couldn't remember ever catching cold from the rain before. The man was a doctor, after all, and knew what he was talking about. That was why he took off his clothes too . . . wasn't it?

 _I don't want to see this. I don't want to be here._ Tsuzuki tried to bolt from this memory, but his eleven-year-old self grabbed hold of him, and would not let him leave.

The doctor grabbed hold of his arm, and even though he wanted so much to leave, to run home, even if he had to go through that torrent, he didn't. He couldn't move.

And after that . . .

He didn't know. His mind drifted to other things. Like how peculiar it was that no white rose was ever really, completely white. There was always something to mar it, like a bit of decay around the edges, or springtails crawling around inside the petals. You wouldn't notice them at first, until you leaned in for a sniff and got really close. He'd blow gently on the blossom and watch them leap and dance and scatter in panic. Then there were the flowers that were all white except for a little random spot of pink, like when you stick your finger on a thorn and a little blood gets on the flower. What went wrong in the plant, he wondered, that it couldn't help producing that one tiny little flaw in each of its flowers? It must have been a mistake, but somehow, even though it wasn't meant to be there, he thought the mistakes were just a little more beautiful—

 _Uh-uh. You don't get to look away._

He tried to concentrate on those roses in his mind, but he felt his younger self's fingertips digging like claws into his skull, into the folds of gray matter, forcibly turning his head, prying open his eyes. _Please, I don't want to be here—_

 _You don't get to pretend away what I did for you anymore. What I did for_ us _. You've been pretending for ninety years. It's time you faced what you did._

He pled with himself, begged himself, not to make him see it. Felt tears well up inside himself to the point he didn't know how they didn't spill over. They made him want to be sick.

But his younger self never shed a tear at what he did. He did not plead with the doctor to let him stop. Maybe it never occurred to him that he didn't have to do this, that he could just run away. Then again, maybe it did. The doctor liked what he did. And Tsuzuki liked it when he could make people feel special, when he could make them feel appreciated. It was such a rare thing for him to feel like _he_ was appreciated. Even if the doctor had to hide tears afterwards, he told Tsuzuki what he had done was good. Good, even though Tsuzuki had to retreat into the far corners of his mind and huddle down, close his eyes and ears, and wait for it to be over.

"Now, you promise me, Asato-kun. This will be our little secret. Understand? If you tell anyone about this, I won't be able to visit your mother anymore and give her her medicine. And you won't be able to come over here. And then who will keep the roses company?"

 _Our little secret, huh?_ Tsuzuki felt the boy inside grin. The sadistic glee of it pulling involuntarily at his own lips, making him want to cry like he hadn't been able to then. _Your secret and mine. Eh, Asato-kun? But my secret was I never wanted to go back to that house. You liked what you did, in your own way, you liked the power you thought it gave you, but I hated you for it. I hated you so much for dragging me back there, again and again. The only time I felt any happiness was . . . was that afternoon . . . when I . . ._

When he grabbed the pruning shears while the doctor had turned his back, putting himself back together so he could pretend what they had done had never happened. Tsuzuki felt like he was floating. He didn't remember walking over there. But he remembered the give of soft flesh around the blades. Could feel it resonating up his arm. He didn't think it would feel so good, but it did. Like cutting into a pie. So he pulled the shears out—and plunged them in again.

And again.

And again.

The doctor tried to choke out his name in a plea, but he never could get it all out. The look on his face, though, of disbelief—not anger, not betrayal, but pure denial, until the very end, stuck in Tsuzuki's head.

The song that was playing on the gramophone that afternoon was still going round his skull when he realized where he was. Knee-deep in the river, trying to wash the blood off his skin and out of his clothes with trembling hands. But when he really looked at himself, when he played the whole thing over as it really happened, moment by moment, he was surprised by how calm he was about the whole thing. As though he'd done all this before. It was nothing to get worked up over.

 _There, now. That wasn't so bad, was it? It could have been a lot worse, when you think about it._

 _Why do you make me relive this? Why do I have to see all of this again?_

 _To trace this problem back to its root._ In his mind's eye, he saw his younger self, pacing with hands behind his back, playing at Muraki. It was the sort of thing he might expect Muraki to say, but the voice it came out in, the face it came out of, those were entirely his own. _To see just where this instinct of ours began to manifest itself. (Instinct?_ Tsuzuki asked, already knowing the answer.) _When was it, the moment we first killed a man, and didn't feel bad about it?_

 _But I_ did _feel bad about it. He was my only friend. What he did to us may have been evil, but it didn't change the fact that he was a kind person. A giving person. He was just trying to live his life, and I stole that from him. Of course I felt bad about it!_

 _. . . just not as much as you should have._

When he finally got home that night, the sun already set, his mother and sister acted as though the blood that still wouldn't come out of his clothes was from the other boys beating him again. But he thought they knew. They must have known.

Ruka knew when the police officer came by the next day, and told her and her mother why the doctor would no longer be coming around. Tsuzuki saw her panicked eyes dart to him—for only a split second, though, because she didn't want the officer to catch her guilt in it. "Are you going to arrest the person who did this?"

"We think it was a random attack, Miss. Probably a vagrant from down by the railroad tracks. It happens sometimes. They break in, looking for valuables or food, and sometimes the homeowner gets in the way. The killer's probably miles away by now."

 _Liar. That wasn't what he said at all._

The officer had hesitated, hoping someone would butt in and keep him from telling these two well-mannered women what he had to say. But no one did. "There were photographs—"

Their mother made a tiny sound like she had just read a sad story in the paper, but Tsuzuki recognized the look on her face. Like he'd stabbed her himself. Ruka cut the officer off. "It's alright, you don't have to say. My mother's health is rather fragile at the moment. All I ask is, if it's not too much trouble, would you please burn them?"

"What do you say to moving again, Asato?" she said later that evening around dinner, with a cheer that may have been false but so desperately needed he wasn't about to take it from her. "Mother's going to need a new doctor, and there are plenty to choose from in the big city. If you don't like one, you just try another! And there's lots more to see and do there than out here in the country. There's a zoo with real-live animals, and you can go to the cinema and escape in a movie any time you like! What do you say, Asato? It will be an adventure. A whole new life. Just start over again."

Just pretend this one never happened. None of it. Just get out of town before anyone could start talking. Just pretend he never stabbed a grown man to death.

And liked it.

 _You knew it was wrong. You just kept going back anyway. You didn't have to, but you did._

 _Because you wanted to be loved. I needed to be loved, and no one else ever showed me half the love that man did. No one but Ruka, anyway. And that was different._

 _. . . wasn't it?_

* * *

For a time, things were better. It was easier to hide a disfigurement, like strange-colored eyes, in a city full of people, than in a little country town, with its backwards ways and suspicious folk. There were even foreigners in Tokyo, with different colors of hair and eyes and skin, and different accents when they talked, and many times he was asked if he was part German or French, or even, once, Turkish, because all things Turkish were exotic, and purple eyes, if nothing else, were certainly exotic.

He learned to laugh at those questions, and leave the askers guessing, because on the one hand, he did not know what nationality his father was. His mother had never mentioned it, so he had always assumed the man was Japanese, but he was beginning to realize now that may not have been true.

But more than that, it was better to be thought of as part foreigner than part demon. If you were part foreign, at least you were still all human. Even if people did treat you sometimes like a hybrid creature to be marveled at, a curiosity. But a half-demon . . . that wasn't even half human.

And foreign things were all the rage. When Ruka wasn't at the factory—she seemed to be spending more and more of her day there with every passing year—they went to foreign restaurants together, and taught themselves to make their favorite Italian dishes (not altogether well on Tsuzuki's part, but it was hard to mess up chopping the vegetables). They watched foreign movies and went to dances where they danced to foreign music, as though for a little while to escape their real lives in the fantasy of another country.

They twirled round and round to something by someone with such a mouthful of a name as Strauss or Lehar or Tchaikovsky, to jaunty toruses of violins in three-four time. Ruka looked like a princess, like Kaguya-hime whose skirts when she spun seemed to hang suspended between the Earth and the Moon. Tsuzuki felt like he could fly away with her. His heart was in his throat, weightless. The music built towards a finale, tempo quickening, and they pushed each other to go faster, faster, until one or the other missed a step and tripped and they both fell on the tatami laughing, just trying to catch their breaths.

A slower number came up next on the gramophone. "Oh, I love this song," Ruka said, sobering, and sat up to listen. Her fingers seemed to follow the notes of the violin on the air, as though she could trace their path behind her closed eyelids.

"It's from an opera called _Tha_ _ï_ _s_ ," Ruka explained when she saw him watching her. "This is the part in the story where the courtesan Thaïs meditates on whether to become a Christian and forsake her life of luxury and pleasure in Alexandria—that's in old Egypt."

Tsuzuki didn't tell her he already knew where Alexandria was. He didn't tell her he was already familiar with the song, too. The performance was a little different, but the doctor had had a version of it on one of his records. It was hard for Tsuzuki to find the beauty in it.

But Ruka loved the piece so much, and the courtesan's story—that was clear from the faraway look that came into her eyes—that Tsuzuki would have done anything not to spoil it for her. "The thought of leaving behind everything she's ever known for something that she knows next to nothing about terrifies her, but somehow, she finds a kind of peace in it, too. She might be giving up the pleasures of the flesh, but in order to know pure Love. So, even though she ridiculed the missionary at first, she decides to devote herself to Christ and become a nun.

"Of course, what Thaïs doesn't know yet is that she'll die within a year. But I think she would say it was worth it. She lived a life full of all the experiences a person could hope to have, even if it was a short life, and at the end, she found a peace that most people _never_ attain."

They listened in silence as that sense of eternal peace was conveyed in the way that only transient music can convey the eternal; but it seemed to Tsuzuki that all the exuberance Ruka had felt at the beginning of the song had been sapped out of her by its end, leaving only a deep sense of sadness. One that he could not reach her in.

"Asato." She tried to sound cheerful and matter-of-fact, but it was a hard sell after that song. "What would you say to starting at a new school?"

"Are we moving again?" It was just the two of them now, had been for a while, but with the photograph and keepsakes in the shrine in the alcove, it felt like their mother was still there with them, watching and listening along in happy silence. It wasn't like they needed to find another doctor anymore.

Ruka smiled, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. "You can start over with a whole new bunch of boys who don't know who you are. And it'll be different this time, I promise. The place is run by missionaries, and they won't tolerate the kind of behavior that boys in public schools get away with. Violence and crude language are against their religion. You would have to live there—but I think you would like it! Better than this hovel, anyway. They have a huge vegetable garden for the students to grow things in—"

"Are you trying to get rid of me?"

She did look up then, a look of shock on her face.

But not, he noticed, denial.

"Asato . . . I can't take care of you anymore."

 _Wait a minute. That isn't right. . . . That was a different argument, a different day._ Several months later, after one of their Sundays together, which had been getting fewer and fewer, and farther between. She had missed two weeks in a row. He hadn't been sure she would turn up this morning at all, but she had. Looking radiant in a flower-printed dress. They'd gone dancing like they used to, at the local hall.

It was only as they were nearing the dormitories at the end of it that he asked her when he could come home, and she dropped that bomb on him. That she couldn't take care of him anymore. "But . . . but I need you, Ruka. I love you."

She blushed, and shook her head. "Don't you think you're getting a little old to be telling your sister you love her?"

"Why should I be? I _do_ love you—"

"You're only, what, fifteen? You don't understand what love is yet, Asato! If you did, you'd know there are different kinds of love, and you're getting to an age when it isn't appropriate for us to talk like this—"

"There's only one kind of love, Ruka." No, he understood. He understood all too well, what the brothers had been trying to teach him in this place, and what Thaïs in that opera Ruka liked so much had discovered. There was only one type of love, and it was deep, fathomless, and blind. It was everything, and it was what he felt for her, sister or not.

Ruka must have known that. That's why her breath caught in the chilly air and she looked away. As if that would erase what he had said. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't change things. I'm barely making enough to feed myself right now—"

"If it's just a matter of money, I can get a job and help out. I don't have to stay in school." He lowered his voice, lest anyone on the grounds hear such seditious talk. "I wouldn't mind, really. They don't even like me here. All the brothers ever seem to talk about is how awful we all are and how we constantly need to ask God for forgiveness. But when I try to ask what specifically I've done, they never seem to be able to tell me. Just that we're all full of sin and need to repent."

"Asato, Tatsuji asked me to marry him."

Tsuzuki's heart seemed to stop in his chest. "Tatsuji?" ( _Some guy I saw once or twice hanging around the school gates, waiting for us to come back. [Ahhh.] She probably told me they were stepping out with each other. In a letter maybe. I guess I didn't pay enough attention. I guess I didn't want to.)_

"And I said I would."

"I forbid it. I don't like the guy."

She met his eyes defiantly then. As hard a look as she gave him Tsuzuki had never seen, and there seemed to be years of accusations unsaid behind it. She would have had no shortage of ammunition, if she'd chosen to hurl them at him.

What she did tell him wasn't much easier to hear. "It doesn't matter if you approve or not! You're still a child, and I'm an adult. I've had to be an adult longer than you even know, taking care of Mother, taking care of you, taking you out like this as though we were sweethearts or something—well, it just isn't right, Asato! You're old enough now that I can make my own decisions, and I decide I want to live my own life! _I_ want to be happy for once! Tatsuji wants me to be his wife, and you can either accept our happiness and have a place in our lives, or you can go your own way."

His jaw clenched so hard it hurt, and he grabbed her shoulders in both hands. Ruka had always been a slight thing, Tsuzuki had already surpassed her in height a few years ago, and she felt like a little bird in his hands, fragile and wild. When really, _he_ was the one who was wild.

She jumped at his violence, his own sister who had nurtured him and stood by him despite everything that he had done. And he saw in that moment that she knew everything that he had done, that she had always known, but had been content to pretend ignorance until now, for his sake.

But they could no longer pretend. If she knew the truth, then that only meant he needed to hold on tighter to her, if he wanted to keep from losing her. "I won't let you marry him, Ruka, I won't let you leave me for him!" he whispered through his teeth, the only way he knew how to get out what he needed to say without breaking down in fear and desperation. "You're the only one I have in this world, you're all I've got left, I can't lose you—"

"Asato, you're scaring me," Ruka whimpered as she tried to break out of his hold. "You're hurting me!" And though he heard her, he didn't really.

He couldn't. Couldn't allow the truth in those words to sink in. He needed her. He was lost without her. He wouldn't know what to do with himself if he lost her, his guiding light, his most precious thing in the world, after losing everything else. Of course he knew what love was, the kind of love that Ruka talked about and the brothers at school preached. It was entrusting so much of your soul to another living being that, if they walked away with it, you never got it back. You just walked around the rest of your life with a huge piece of yourself missing.

He tried to impress that on Ruka—first with words, but when those failed him and she didn't want to listen, he tried to press it into her, to pull her to him until he couldn't tell where one of them ended and the other began. Like when they were children, and he would come home with scrapes and bruises and she would just hold him. And the beating of her heart against his chest was all he needed to reassure him this life was still worth living, there was still _someone_ in it who loved him, unconditionally.

So where had all these conditions come from? How come he'd never noticed them before, as they silently lined up along the periphery, waiting for their chance to intercede? Tsuzuki's desperation to hold on was strong, but Ruka's to get away was stronger. He would never forget the cry of relief that fell unabashedly from her lips when she got free of his hold. Even eighty-five years later, he saw it as though it had all just happened.

She had the compassion not to call him a monster before she turned and walked quickly away. She must have still loved him enough not to do that. But, in truth, she didn't have to say it.

* * *

 _How many weeks, months, years, did you sit by the curb, waiting for her to come pick you up for your Sunday outing? Waiting for that letter that never came? Oh, there were a few awkward ones at first, her pretending like that last evening never happened, making false promises of seeing you again soon. After the new year, or after classes ended, after this, after that. But it never happened, did it? Even those letters eventually stopped. She cut you out. Fifteen years, down the drain just like that. But you just went right on deluding yourself. "This week, surely." "Any minute now." "Just give it till sundown, she's bound to show up." "She must have had to work late, or maybe she's feeling under the weather today." Sure, that must be it. . . ._

 _You always knew you'd see her again—you were_ certain _of it—even though you never did._

 _You were always positive you'd get a second chance to explain yourself, that she'd magically forget everything you'd done or said to her and come running back to your arms. You've been dead for over seventy-five years and you_ still _can't stop believing that, can you?_

"Pathetic," his classmate sighed, as the goldfish barely touched the rice paper on his paddle and tore it right through. "Come on, Tsuzuki, these games are rigged. Only children get to win."

"You just need to have patience," he said as he concentrated on his own paddle and goldfish, waiting for just the right moment to—

He made his move, and the goldfish flipped out of the water and landed gently in its cup.

Tsuzuki turned to his classmate, smiling victoriously, but the other stubbornly acted unimpressed. "That's just luck."

"No. It's called a compassionate touch. You just don't have it."

That started their other university friends chuckling, and ribbing Tsuzuki about his "compassionate touch." But Tsuzuki wasn't paying attention. He caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd of festival-goers, dressed in a summer suit and boater hat among all the more traditional yukata. He knew that man, with his imperious expression, the way he looked down on other people like he was a duke or a count, when he was anything but.

Tatsuji. Now Tsuzuki remembered why he didn't like the guy. Yet, hope surged within him. If that man was here, that meant Ruka had to be—

A young woman with a Western frock and permanent clasped onto his arm, and they exchanged smiles that even at a glance a person could see reflected genuine affection.

But that young woman wasn't Ruka.

Disappointment turned to rage inside Tsuzuki. He couldn't remember walking over there, but he remembered the startled look on Tatsuji's face, how quickly it changed when he recognized Tsuzuki. "Hey, you're Ruka's little brother, aren't you? Asato, was it? You've grown up, almost didn't recognize you."

"What are you doing here with this . . . this _adulteress_?" Tsuzuki spat. The young woman recoiled, red in the face, but as far as he was concerned, he was being polite. She deserved to be called worse for what she'd done. "Where's Ruka, huh? Where's my sister, Tatsuji? Where's your _wife_? Does she know about this?"

Tatsuji pulled him away, to a shady spot where they could speak without onlookers. As far as Tsuzuki was concerned, though, he wanted everyone to look. He wanted everyone to see what a bastard had taken Ruka away from him, and how justified he was now in warning her back then that this guy was no good.

He was too focused on his own hurts to notice the sorrow on Tatsuji's face. "Asato . . . Ruka's dead. You know this."

How does a person recover from a blow like that? Suddenly his world was spinning, crumbling around him, but Tsuzuki's disbelief propped him up, held his head above the tide threatening to overwhelm him. He couldn't live in a world that didn't have Ruka in it. He didn't know what he would do. So, of course, it couldn't possibly be true.

"You're lying." Yes, he was sure of it. That was the only explanation for hearing what he had just heard. "That's what cheaters do, they lie!"

And the hurt in Tatsuji's eyes—that wasn't really pain. It couldn't be. It was just the look of a con-artist desperate to be believed.

"I sent a letter to your school two years ago when she passed, and I never heard a damn thing back!" Tatsuji covered his mouth, but too late to take back the anger in his words. "I'm sorry. I thought . . . I thought they gave it to you, I thought you knew. I just thought, that the reason you didn't come to the funeral was because you were still sore about our marriage . . ."

 _He had to be lying. At least about the letter. I don't remember a letter._

 _Sure you do. . . ._

He remembered something. Vaguely. Tearing the crumpled paper in shaking hands. A friar with the black eye Tsuzuki gave him. That twisting, wrenching feeling inside, like someone was turning a screw in his heart. Screaming himself hoarse inside a locked room— _That's right. They locked me in the groundskeeper's shed until I'd screamed and hit all the fight out of me. They had to protect the other students; I upset them too much. I remember my hands in bandages—broken, I think. I broke them._

 _But I was certain I'd just dreamed all that. It had to be a dream. I couldn't keep living if I thought Ruka was . . . that she was really . . ._

 _You must have just convinced yourself the letter never existed. You were always good at that. Seeing only what you wanted to see. Hearing only what you wanted to hear. To justify what you did._

". . . she was sick for a long time," Tatsuji said. "Before I knew her, even. You must have known that."

No, he hadn't. It couldn't have been true. Another lie. His Ruka had been healthy, and happy. Always smiling. She loved to dance. Clearly she had been fine. It must have been Tatsuji's fault. _He_ made her sick!

"How do I know it wasn't something _you_ gave her, Asato? She said you never came down with anything. You were probably carrying a dozen different diseases and unknowingly passing them to her."

But Tatsuji couldn't have loved her. He couldn't have really loved Ruka if he had brought some other tramp to the festival when his wife was barely two years in the ground.

Tatsuji had been patient thus far, he had shown restraint in the face of this indictment, but no more. "The hell do you know about love?" he growled through bared teeth. "Huh, kid? What kind of monster claims he loves his only sister, and then never even shows up to her funeral to pay his respects!"

Tsuzuki lashed out, eager to make that loathsome man eat his own words. But he'd never really learned to throw a proper punch, had always been the victim of blows rather than the dealer. His fist landed, but rather than grant him the satisfaction he craved, it only made him want more. Tatsuji was clearer-headed. He grabbed Tsuzuki by the collar and gave him a hard shove backwards. Tsuzuki tripped, and felt his whole head ring like a bell as he fell against something sharp and unyielding.

Blood trickled hot into his eye, tinting half the world red. He trembled as he saw it come away on his fingers. Or maybe it was the blow to the head that had rattled his nerves. He couldn't focus. His skull felt like it was being split down the middle, like the stone statue he had fallen against was still lodged there, the pain was so intense. It would barely let him catch his breath.

"Oh my god. . . ." The words resonated in his head, but muffled, like he was hearing them underwater.

Tatsuji loomed over him, staring down in horror at what he had done.

But regret? Surely he didn't feel any. Surely he felt no more sorry for what he had done than those boys with their sticks and rocks, sinking their shoes into Tsuzuki's ribs when he was down just to make sure he stayed that way, just to make sure he remembered what he was, and where he belonged. Surely if that look was a look of fear, it was only because he was afraid of getting caught. When what Tatsuji should have feared was that he hadn't finished Tsuzuki off when he had the chance.

 _They all think I'm a monster? Fine. I'll show them what a monster is. They have no_ idea _what that word really means, but they will. Then they'll truly be sorry._

He tackled Tatsuji to the ground, wrinkling that suit he hated so much in his fists. The man's boater rolled off during their struggle, and Tsuzuki could stand that holier-than-thou face of his no longer. A bottle found its way into his grip, and he smashed it into that face over and over, even after it shattered and spilled sake everywhere and all he had left was a jagged neck, and he could no longer tell the difference between broken glass and booze and Tatsuji's blood and his own, he just kept stabbing anyway, to erase that face that had taken Ruka away from him from existence once and for all, even long after Tatsuji had stopped moving.

Someone jumped on his back. A woman's terrified screams ricocheted like gunfire in his cracked skull. He tried to elbow her off of him, and when that wouldn't work, lashed out with the broken bottleneck—

And watched, stunned, as she fell back on the pavement, clutching at her throat. Helpless to stop the blood running down her dress, running thick through her fingers like oil through a sieve. He knew she wasn't Ruka, but in that moment . . .

 _In that moment . . . I could almost swear . . ._

 _Don't waste your sympathy. She was a whore,_ his eighteen-year-old self murmured encouragingly by his ear, _mucking up Ruka's memory. She thought she could replace your sister._

No. She was an innocent. They were both innocents. And he cut them down.

He'd cut them all down. The doctor, the boy in his village—his mother and Ruka, who he couldn't save and never even tried to—

Maybe Tatsuji was right. Maybe he'd actually killed them, too. So many buds, just trying their best to live. Just trying to become something beautiful, something pure. And he'd ruined it. He'd snipped their lives all away, just like that.

Because this was what he was. A plague. A curse.

Monster.

 _Murderer!_

He could feel the people gathering around them like shadows, their frightened whispers, unintelligible accusations. Their voices ran together, but he knew the gist of what they were saying, could feel the weight of their hatred, their disgust. He wasn't sure anymore if they were from his present or his past, alive or dead. But he couldn't stand the pressure of them. They were splitting him open. He had to get out of there, had to run away where they could never catch him, and if they stood in his way, he would just have to cut them down too.

He looked down at the blood on his hands, mixed in among the bits of broken glass, and couldn't possibly tell whose it was. All he knew was, he needed a doctor.

* * *

It was a large Western house with a brick facade, no cottage in the country by any means. There was no white picket fence, and the roses out front were pink and yellow. But there was a big cross on the sign, a cross with even arms, and everyone he passed who gave him such frightened looks and clutched their belongings that much closer to themselves, assured him that there was a doctor within.

Tsuzuki expected—feared he would find—and sort of hoped he would, too—the man with the graying hair and glasses. Maybe those things he vaguely remembered doing had just been a nightmare he had had as a child. But it was a younger man with a different face and a long white coat who opened the door when he banged on it—whose feet Tsuzuki collapsed at when his legs, having reached their destination, refused to take him any further.

 _I should never have gone to him. That was the start of all of this, when it should have been the end. I should have just let myself be apprehended for the murders I committed. They would have hanged me. It probably wouldn't have worked, but they would have eventually found some means of execution that did, and I wouldn't have had to resort to ending my life myself, and Enma never would have made me a shinigami—_

 _Now, Tsuzuki, you know damn well that isn't true._

The decisions he made could never change what he _was_. Maybe he never would have met Muraki Yukitaka, and maybe Kazutaka would never have been born, if he had just surrendered himself to the hands of Fate. Or maybe that _was_ his fate, his karmic lot, to give rise to something as terrible as he was. That was the punishment he deserved, to be forced to watch someone else kill in his name.

But he was fooling himself if he believed Enma wouldn't have recognized the same monstrous nature in him at his judgment. That he wouldn't still be placed in charge of taking human souls, ending human lives. He had been made for the job. Plain and simple. That was why he did it so well.

He could still recall a couple on their honeymoon by the sea, so terrified of parting so soon after finding bliss. He was only supposed to take the husband, but the wife refused to be separated from him. She'd pushed Tsuzuki's hand, until it held her head under the waves, and his guilty tears disappeared in the ocean . . .

The young war widow, whose life hadn't been so different from his mother's decades before, aside from having no children to give her a reason to save herself. All she'd wanted was to feel she was loved, one last time, and he'd reminded her so much of her missing husband. He'd made her feel loved. For one night—that wasn't asking too much of him. It never crossed his mind that it might be inappropriate for someone in his position, some _thing_ in his position. She would have died whether he had or hadn't. But it was what she needed . . .

The child . . .

All children were the worst. But Tatsumi had been on that case with him, when their relationship was already fraying at the seams. There was so much blood. To this day, he couldn't remember why there had been so much, or whose it was, or even if he'd somehow just imagined it being there, streaming down his hands and arms. But there was Tatsumi trying to pull him away from the scene when it was over. The broken toys that littered the room. A teddy bear with stuffing oozing out. A doll with a cracked face. Even then he hated the things. They were human on their outsides, but inside, empty shells. Just facsimiles of something alive and real. A fitting symbol of himself.

"Stop doing this to yourself," Tatsumi had said with atypical candor, when he thought Tsuzuki wouldn't remember the words through his fog, "Snap out of it. Please. I can't stand to see you this way."

 _But can't you see the blood, Tatsumi? It's everywhere. Why can't you see it!_

"Enough, now, Tsuzuki. That's enough. You did what you had to do."

Maybe that was it.

Maybe the key to all this was just to accept it.

 _I did what I had to do. No more. No less. To question why it had to be this way is to question the will of God. Which is not to say that it shouldn't be done, only . . ._

 _What good does it ultimately do?_

 _Is that what you were trying to tell me?_

But the voice of that ten-year-old self did not answer. Nor should he have expected it to.

* * *

He was alone. He always had been alone.

The darkened ceiling light that stared down at him and the empty chair beside the door held no life in them. They could not save him from his current situation any more than they could save him from his past.

Was this what Christ had felt like on his cross? he wondered, as he lay there with arms stretched out, feverish and uncomfortably numb from the poison in his blood. Powerless? From that far up, one had a clear view of the suffering of the multitudes, and a keen sense of how completely unable he was to alleviate that suffering for even a single person. Except in Tsuzuki's case, he had caused the suffering, and his sins were not of the sort anyone could mend or undo.

And unlike Christ, Tsuzuki didn't even get a death to look forward to at the end of his crucifixion.

. . . Or maybe that was the solution to this conundrum. Maybe death, and resurrection, were his way out of this trap.

 _Except for one little problem. How to die when I can't lift a finger to kill myself?_

Except that wasn't exactly true either. He could lift a finger. He just couldn't move very much before the pentacle pulled him back. His muscles were weak from the poison, and the harder he fought, the more painfully he was wrenched back to the floor.

But since when did he let pain stop him from fighting? He sucked in a breath, bracing himself for what was to come, and reached deep inside for the anger and determination he knew was there. Though he could feel his bones snap with the pressures pulling against him, though the pain was so intense that even his screams couldn't drown it out, and even though he felt the warm dampness of blood flowing down his arms, he could not stop.

If he had to crack the very foundation of this prison to free himself, he would. But it would be the last time. If, somehow, he did manage to get out of his, he wouldn't allow himself to be put in chains again.

* * *

Muraki barely stepped foot inside the house that evening when Sakaki approached him. "Sir, it's about time you got back. I've been trying to reach you—"

"Our guest?"

"Has been making a tremendous amount of noise all afternoon."

Muraki needed to hear no more. He raced to the apartment upstairs as fast as he was able, heart leaping into his chest at the thought that maybe this time he would arrive to find Tsuzuki wasn't there.

The rooms he passed were all empty. Though he told himself he shouldn't expect to find Tsuzuki in any one of them, still he feared the worst. What should happen if he reached the last one and found that empty as well? He had planned for it—he would have been a fool not to have thought of all the ways this might possibly end—but he wasn't ready. There was still so much to do.

As it turned out, he needn't have worried.

When he threw open the last door, there Tsuzuki was, seated cross-legged in the center of the burnt-out and useless outline of the pentacle. The ceiling light had shattered, cracks opened up in the mantelpiece and the plaster walls that were not there the last time Muraki had checked on him. Blood stained Tsuzuki's shirt, but it was old. Old enough to have dried. On Tsuzuki himself, there was not a mark.

But Muraki felt his breath catch in his throat. A smile tugged at one corner of his lips, and he let it have its way. Tsuzuki was still here. He was still here, and he had done it. He had broken out of his trap. Though God only knew how.

That wasn't the main cause for his elation, however. When Tsuzuki looked up at the interruption of his meditations, Muraki could see it in his eyes how he had changed. No longer the Tsuzuki he had left here, not entirely, but one Muraki had met before nonetheless.

"Welcome back," Muraki breathed, feeling like he was in that chapel in Nagasaki all over again, seeing for the first time what he could only dream and pray he might find. Doubting his own eyes, as the saints surely doubted their visions when they found themselves within arm's reach of something holy. What he had searched for for so long was here, needing only for him to reach out and grab it.

Now the next phase of his work began. He only hoped he survived to see it through.

* * *

 **Author's note:** _The violin piece mentioned in this chapter is "Meditation from Thaïs" by Massenet._


	20. Going under

"You two are in luck," the retainer said as she led the way down the hall of the palace. "Lord Sohryuu has agreed to have an audience with you. Not an honor he bestows very frequently these days. Upon those outside his war council, at least."

Behind the woman's back, Nonomiya sent a nod of thanks Yali's way for arranging this. He beamed under his mistress's gracious smile, his hands clasped tight behind his back as though he were literally holding in his happiness.

"It does not go unappreciated, believe me," said Kazuma. "We are most grateful for whatever help he can offer us in our search."

"Well, anything that may help you to locate the offender Kurosaki that much faster and remove him from this world, he would be only too happy to give." The retainer must have noticed the two women's discomfited reaction, as she amended abashedly: "Er, Lord Sohryuu's choice of words, not mine. You must understand, everything that is unfolding now in the other worlds on account of that boy's actions was foreseen. Only Lord Sohryuu made the connection between the omens and Kurosaki's arrival. He has been warning against this day ever since—seemingly on deaf ears."

The two shinigami exchanged a brief glance. Kazuma felt it best to play along. "Well, we are all ears now." After all, it could only hurt their chances for assistance if they insisted Hisoka was innocent of the charges against him. Even that would have been only a half truth. He may have been innocent of Sohryuu's charges, but that did not make him innocent of all wrongdoing. "Kurosaki's a wanted man back in our world. It is very much in our boss's interest to see him returned. We don't want him to darken your doorstep any more than you do."

"My lord will be so glad to hear that," said Sohryuu's retainer. And she waved them into the war room.

Which was already abuzz with activity. Advisors scurrying about, generals in armor with swords at their hips looking tense, and talking in hushed voices by Sohryuu's ear.

The dragon himself, though he sat in the center of all the activity, seemed a world apart from it. Kazuma and Nonomiya had heard whispers of some mysterious madness that afflicted him from Yali's other contacts, but one would hardly know it to look at him. His fine robes were immaculate, his hair neatly coiffed as befitting a king. He still radiated unimaginable power. It was only the distant look in his eyes, the troubled look, while his subjects milled about him, that made Kazuma wonder if there was some truth to the rumor.

The retainer stared, eyes wide. "What's going on . . .?"

"The betrayer, Rikugou, has broken out of his prison."

At the sound of their lord's voice, all other talk ceased. Though everyone must have known this already—it was the reason they were acting so frantically to discharge orders and make calculations—somehow hearing it from Sohryuu's lips gave it a weight it didn't have before.

"We only just received word," Kijin said in the tense silence that followed, knowing the shinigami would want more information than that. "The alarms surrounding his person were tripped. Overhead views show a large hole in the roof of the stronghold that was not there before. We have received only preliminary reports from tengu forces in the area, but it appears as though he escaped."

"B-b-but," the retainer stumbled, "that's . . ."

"Impossible?" said Sohryuu. The corner of his lip twitched wryly. "Hardly. His confinement was in part self-inflicted. We had him hobbled when he returned to us, not maimed. Our mistake. Properly motivated, he could leave any time he chose. And did."

"My lord," said one of the officers, seated before a screen in Tenkuu's wall where data were streaming in. "It seems Kurosaki was spotted entering the fortress some hours before. It is believed he is responsible for Rikugou's break-out, though at this time tengu cannot confirm. Shall they pursue?"

Despite his human form, the roar that tore itself from Sohryuu's throat was all dragon. Officers nearest the throne leaped back as their lord stood. Kijin, Kazuma noticed, watched his father guiltily from the corner of his eye, pretending to be totally focused on the terminal in front of him.

Yali stepped back, blending into the shadows, but the two shinigami stood their ground as the dragon approached them. Though Kazuma knew he could crush the afterlife from her with one talon-tipped hand, even in his anger he would not do it. He needed them as they needed him.

"Every time that demon child comes here he brings nothing but destruction," Sohryuu growled at the women. "He belongs to _your_ world. Find him. Put a permanent end to him if you must, but get him the hell out of my realm!"

"Believe me," Kazuma assured him, "we intend to do just that. Provide us with the resources we need and we will get right on it."

Sohryuu waved his hand. "Done. What do you require?"

"Maps, for starters. Of where we should be looking."

"I can provide you with those," Kijin offered, injecting himself into the conversation. He put a hand on his father's arm, murmured a few gentle words to assure him everything would be taken care of; and when Sohryuu turned back toward his throne and his ministers, Kijin told the women, "Follow me."

He was careful to speak little until he could be sure they would not be overheard. At least, not by anyone who had Sohryuu's ear. "I apologize for my father if he frightened you," he said. "We are in the middle of a war, though I fear we have felt only the tip of the spear so far. These times are trying on us all, but on none more than him."

"I'll bet," said Kazuma with a huff, but Nonomiya had to ask: "Is that all that's bothering him, Kijin, or is it something more, um, psychological?"

"Do you mean, has he gone mad?" The young man thought about how he might answer that tactfully. "You must have heard the rumors, then. I suppose it's impossible not to when the walls really are listening to everything said within them. Suffice it to say Father has had his faith deeply shaken. It is a condition that might have a simple remedy, but in the meantime it has left him . . . well, shall we just say, wanting in decisiveness."

"You fear he can't be the leader this world needs at present."

Nonomiya's question seemed to unsettle the boy, but he kept the smile planted firmly on his lips. "It is something that afflicts the old, I hear. Or, perhaps, when he made me and my sister it fractured a greater part of him than was understood at the time."

"Meaning?" said Kazuma.

"He suspects easily, probably because he forgets things. Things from long ago. Like whether or not the person he loved dearest in all the world even existed."

"Wow, that's harsh. Would make anyone a little paranoid, I guess."

Nonomiya might not have phrased it quite that way, but she agreed. It was hard to imagine what it would be like to exist for so long that she forgot her parents, or Kazuma for that matter. Perhaps it was something that happened to a person without their even being aware of it. Could she ever _not know_ that she had forgotten someone so dear to her?

Yet, in a way—she thought as she looked over at her partner—wasn't that precisely what had happened?

"It happens when your life is measured in millennia. In any case," Kijin went on, "I must insist you and your shiki keep this information between us. We cannot risk further instability in the realm at this moment, and I fear that if word got out—"

"We will be discreet," Nonomiya promised. And with a hard look at her shiki: "Isn't that right, Yali?"

"You have my word, Miss."

"But I said I would help you to find Hisoka," Kijin said, "and I meant it. I trust you are not really going to use 'any means necessary' to bring him in."

"We think we can convince him to come with us peacefully," Kazuma said. "We are Peacekeepers, after all. We have no desire to hurt the kid. Might only piss him off. Besides, he's as much our friend as I'm guessing he is yours, much as you might be trying to keep that from dear old dad."

Kijin's brief, guilty lowering of his gaze told her she'd read that right. "You're not empathic, too, by any chance?"

"Nah. Just a good judge of character."

"But timing is of the essence," said Nonomiya. "We need to get to Kurosaki before he can cause any more trouble—for all of our sakes."

Kijin snorted. "Fair enough. As it happens, I have a good idea of where he's going."

"Care to share that with us?"

"I'll do you one better: I'll take you to him myself."

* * *

It rained that night. And though the raindrops barely reached the ground beneath the jungle canopy where they stopped to rest, the humidity and the heat made it all but impossible to get comfortable.

"We should reach the outskirts of the desert before sundown tomorrow, if we continue at our current pace," Senrima told them, "and then another day to reach Kurikara's stronghold." The undercurrent in her voice told it plain: She still wasn't convinced this was a good idea. But she had agreed to help Hisoka, and anyway, K had probably told her in whatever language cats communicated by that their destination was non-negotiable. "Of course, it would be faster to travel by wormhole—"

"But dangerously unreliable," Rikugou put in. "The wormholes are impossible to predict. We could end up on the other side of this world—or in another plane of existence altogether."

"We'll keep going as we're going then," Hisoka said, and let that be the end of it.

Rikugou had decided to stay in bird form, settling himself into a position that allowed Hisoka and K to rest against the softer feathers of his flank, while his wing sheltered them from moisture like a well-insulated tent.

Worn out from the trials at the fortress, Hisoka was ready to turn in. But some impression kept him from closing his eyes just yet: an impression of something left unsaid, and burning to be spoken. He opened his eyes to see Rikugou's two left ones staring at him out of that massive head. "What?"

The great bird hesitated. "Nothing," he finally said. "Just thinking. We will speak in the morning."

But morning was almost through when Rikugou finally brought it up. They were flying over the jungle, Senrima and K below them on their eight, when he said to Hisoka: "Do you mind if we take a brief rest? There is something I wish to discuss with you."

His voice was so grave, it seemed impossible for Hisoka to say no. And anyway, it would feel good to stop and stretch his legs, and take a break from the wind whipping in his face. "What's this about?"

"Our relationship, as a matter of fact. I think you would agree that it is in need of some repair. That is why you came here to find me, is it not? I believe that the failure of my summons to the Real World could only in part be attributed to your haste to use me. We had such little time to foment our bond after you won me, and I . . . well, I lament that I was very out of practice. It would be one matter if we had all the time in the world to get to know each other better, but I fear our current circumstances do not allow for a leisurely courtship this time either."

Relationship, courtship. . . . The connotations of what Rikugou was saying were disconcerting, to say the least. "Can't you just download a tutorial on how to use you directly into my brain?" They _were_ in a digital world, after all.

That got a chuckle out of the bird. "Actually, I had something along those lines in mind. Do you suppose you could humor me for a small experiment?"

"Sure. Why not."

At that confirmation, Rikugou let out a screech like the cry of an eagle. Moments later, Hisoka heard Senrima's whinny on the whistle of the wind, saw her toss her head and kick her feet against the sky, leaving ripples in the air as she broke the sound barrier.

Then Rikugou banked right, gliding on a warm current that slowly brought him lower over the forest canopy. The two circled for a few minutes, looking for a landing zone that might accommodate Rikugou's immense size. Eventually they spotted a series of waterfalls, surrounded by boulders and a large enough break in the trees. Rikugou set down there.

And, when Hisoka had climbed down from his shoulders, shrank down to human size again. A robe of maple leaves in muted shades of green and gold covered his shoulders and billowed around his legs. He found a pair of glasses in one of the sleeves, and slipped them on. "Ah, much better," Rikugou said of the change. "I'm not used to staying in that form for so long." He rubbed a hand over his shaved head, which was sporting a more noticeable layer of peach fuzz. "Though there's still room for improvement in this one."

Hisoka looked around the place as he stretched. It was peaceful here, between the sound of the waterfalls and the hush of the trees shaking in the breeze, the distant song of birds. He expected to hear the roar of Senrima's hooves approaching, like a jet passing overhead, but never did. "Won't the others be joining us?"

"They went on ahead. We will catch up with them later. For the moment it's just the two of us. I thought it would be better if we did this in private."

Hisoka spun to look at him. "Did _what_ in private?" What exactly had he agreed to? He remembered what techniques Terazuma and Kokushungei had used to repair their damaged bond. But surely it wasn't expected that all shiki be sexually intimate with their masters. Was it?

"Master Kurosaki. . . ." Rikugou took a step toward him, and Hisoka involuntarily took one back. That made the astrologer pause. "Just what do you think I intend to do to you?"

"Something personal." To say the least.

The other blinked. "Well, of course it is personal. That is how it must be for the two of us to work. If we are to know each other's souls, if you hope to command me and I to obey, then we must know one another completely, flaws and fears and all. No secrets between us. No surprises. There must be total trust. I must be comfortable in your mind, and you in mine."

"My mind?"

"Yes." Then it was Rikugou's turn for embarrassment. He even blushed. "Wait. Did you think I meant . . .?"

"No offense or anything, I'm just not interested in going to bed with anyone, least of all a guy who's also a giant bird." Maybe sex with shikigami seemed perfectly normal for some people, but to Hisoka it seemed to border on bestiality. Though, considering these were gods, he couldn't be sure for which side it was more taboo.

Rikugou smiled as he shook his head. "I apologize if you thought that was what I had planned. I have no interest in you that way, you may rest assured. You're like an infant compared to me. To say it would be inappropriate would be a gross understatement."

 _Wouldn't it be enough to say you're not interested and leave it at that?_ His choice of words left Hisoka feeling a little offended. So maybe Hisoka wasn't thousands of years old, but calling him an infant was a little extreme.

Rikugou sobered. "Though I cannot say that what I propose is any less intimate. If anything, it may be more. After all, when two people join together in physical union, they remain separate unto themselves mentally. They can hide their thoughts, their fears, from the other, confident in their sovereign individuality."

"It's . . . different for an empath," Hisoka corrected him before he could censor himself. "Sometimes it's hard to tell where my thoughts begin and the other person's end. Physical touch just makes it worse. It makes it that much easier to lose track of myself in another person."

He detected a wave of warm sympathy from Rikugou's direction. "Then I understand your hesitation. But I ask you to trust me and take a stab at it—as I believe they say in your world. I do believe our bond will be stronger for it."

"Did you do this with Tsuzuki, too?"

The mention of his name seemed to bring with it a tangle of emotions for Rikugou, if the shadow that crossed his face was any indication. "Tsuzuki did not have your particular skills. We had to come to know one another some other way. I seem to recall a lot of time spent gardening and playing strategy games together."

That was a "no," then. Hisoka didn't like the use of past tense so much, either. "Have you ever done this, mind-melded, with one of your masters?"

"I did it with you, last time you were here, when you challenged me and I tested you with a game of _go._ Of course, that time we met on a neutral ground, I was not inviting you directly into my mind, so this may feel a bit different. But I'm confident that if I didn't fry your synapses before, I won't now. If that's what you're worried about."

"I guess that's somewhat reassuring." But Hisoka also saw the logic to it. An awkward, twisted, science-fictiony logic but a kind of sense nonetheless. If Rikugou were a weapon, and Hisoka his wielder, he had to know what Rikugou was made of before he could use him. He would not fire a gun without learning first how it worked—at least, it wouldn't be very wise to do so. Yet that was precisely what he had done when he summoned Rikugou in the living world the last time.

And he had paid dearly for his haste, his reckless confidence. He could not make that same mistake again.

"Okay. What do I do?"

Rikugou sat cross-legged and patted the rock in front of him. "Sit down with me. I will go first. There is something I want to share with you, a memory which I think represents who I am in a way that may help you call on me later. I think it will be a pleasant beginning point for you. I don't wish to overwhelm you on our first go of it."

"Alright." Hisoka did as asked, mirroring Rikugou's position on the boulder, their knees nearly touching. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, willed himself not to panic. But it was hard to keep calm when he was preparing to share his mind with another.

Rikugou seized his right wrist, and pushed up his sleeve. He gripped Hisoka's arm tight, and urged the boy to do the same to him. Hisoka could feel the eyes in the palms of Rikugou's hands against his skin, rolling beneath their lids, and tried not to focus on how strange and slightly gross that was.

"Now, relax," Rikugou said in low, even tones. "It may help to close your eyes. Free your mind of all pressing thoughts but mine. You will see it coming toward you, like a distant light at the end of a tunnel, gradually growing larger, brighter. . . ."

And then he was surrounded by light.

 _He_ _was_ _light—roiling, dancing, in all colors of the visible spectrum, and even more that were invisible. He was warm, like a fetus in the womb, and resonant with its mother's heartbeat. And crackling with his own strength, his own energy, growing until it could not be contained. He erupted in a joy so pure and all-encompassing it would have brought tears to his eyes, had he eyes, or tears. But he sang with it, laughed in it, and arced and twisted and stretched his immensity out into the ether, and left the bonds of that which he had been part of, free to fly at his own pleasure._

 _He heard/saw/felt his brothers/sisters/friends_ (human words failed where there was no sex or individuality, or even discrete senses) _surround him, freed in the same glorious eruption that had released and made him. They flickered and danced and intertwined in an endless world without gravity or bounds, racing each other as fast as the universe would let them. Time stood still all around them, while they sang songs that made the whale's and the nightingale's seem dull. It was bliss, completely and utterly: the bliss of unconditional belonging, and of unbridled freedom at the same time. It was the bliss of seeing endless new horizons stretch out before him, endless questions waiting to be answered; and simultaneously, knowing that he knew everything there was to know, everything he ever needed to know. Being complete, a ray of pure energy, pure power. He wanted to inhabit this feeling forever, and never let it end._

There was a tug on Hisoka's mind, trying to draw him out of the experience. Some distant voice telling him _That's enough for now. Time to leave this._

But he was too intoxicated by the thrill of it. He had never felt anything remotely so good, so pure, so whole. And, as though to make up for everything good that he had missed out on in his life, he wanted more. He held on tight, didn't dare let go.

 _And there was more. Skimming across the ionosphere, watching the greens and reds and violets light up in his wake as the friction tickled his photons. His friends/brothers/sisters danced across the poles, and he danced with them as they swirled off into outer space again, or burned out in a glorious blaze, singing with joy even while disappearing into the ether. They knew no sorrow, even as their brief existence came to an end._

 _There is another tug—but this one is different. This one seizes hold of him and doesn't let go. He panics. This is a new sensation. He hasn't felt its like before, but he knows he doesn't like it. The curvature of the planet looms too close, too big in his view. And growing larger. His belly burns. Or, rather, it crackles, like he's being poked with a million tiny needles. And it isn't pleasant. He tries to rise, to catch another magnetic wave, but there is nothing. He's sinking, sinking down, dragged down toward the rock and he can't stop his fall can't stop the air tearing at his chest tearing at his insides making him solid like a sinking stone and branches scratch and tear his body as they break his fall. He's charged and the core of the Earth is pulling him in like a magnet. Such pressure, such pain, such fear, such crushing fear he has never known the like, and then—_

 _Then agony. Such agony! Like he's been snapped, compressed, every bone in his body broken into a million pieces. No, not broken: re-made. Shoved down into a mold. He has to choose—what to be, what not. His skin_ (erupts, singes) _tightens, strangles him, choking him, like he's a red-hot sword being plunged into ice water. Someone is cradling him in their hands._ (Tatsumi carrying his remains, every movement, every point of contact a flare-up that's excruciating.) _It hurts, this new sensation. Everything so raw, so new. He hates it here. But nowhere to go. For the first time he knows scent. The breath of trees, the smell of green. It soothes his aches. A face peers down at him, awash in sunlight. His eyes—he has eyes_ (snake eyes) _, he never had to see through such a small lens before—drag it into focus. Such kindness there, though he only just knows these things for the first time. Such beauty—_

 _Tsuzuki. It's Tsuzuki._

And the shock of seeing him there, in Rikugou's memory, is too much.

With an intake of breath—like it was his first breath—Hisoka let Rikugou release his mind. He came back to himself, finding himself alone with Rikugou, much to his disappointment, and clutching the shiki's wrist embarrassingly tightly in both hands. The whole episode was intense—a mix of emotions and physical sensations he no longer knew how to process, now that their freshness was quickly fading.

"I'm sorry," Rikugou said, "you didn't deserve to be subjected to that trauma. I should have guessed, with our connection still relatively untried, that it might be too much too soon. I did not mean for you to feel all of that—"

"No, no, it's all right." Hisoka's voice felt foreign in his own throat, as though he had to consciously remind himself who he was. "I _wanted_ to feel it all. I can handle pain. Yours was different, maybe, but I wouldn't say it was necessarily worse than the things I've experienced." The last feeling still lingered. It was that sense of kindness, felt so intimately and resonating, harmonizing with something deep inside himself, that made Hisoka ask, "Was that how Tsuzuki won you?"

"Tsuzu—" Rikugou was quick to understand. "Ah. I see. It was his face you saw in the memory."

"Yeah. Why, should it have been someone different?"

Rikugou had to think about that one himself. He drew back his arm. "I suppose it's been so long now that I've forgotten what he truly looked like, replaced him with the nearest thing. Perhaps something in Tsuzuki's character reminded me of him."

Or maybe I was projecting unintentionally, Hisoka thought, seeing the person I wanted to see. But he couldn't prove it one way or another. "Then, that wasn't actually Tsuzuki."

"No. That was a memory from a very, very long time ago. There's a story that's told here, of the day a star fell from the heavens and landed in the lap of the Emperor, while he was resting beneath the shade of a paulownia tree. Like a baby bird from its nest. . . ."

"So the Emperor did exist. You didn't just imagine him."

"Ah, but unfortunately even that logic isn't water-tight. I might just as well have created a memory out of my longing for the legend to be a reality."

But Hisoka didn't see how he could actually believe that, even if he had to agree that a memory wasn't evidence, it wasn't proof. Memories could be manipulated.

"What you made me feel just now," he began slowly, unsure how to put the experience into words, when it seemed to defy description so well. "What exactly was that? I felt like I didn't have a body, but I certainly existed."

"What you saw was my very first memory. I guess you might say, it was my birth."

"Then, when you said a falling star. . . . You don't mean a meteor."

Rikugou shook his head. "Maybe in your world, a falling star refers to a meteor; but in mine, it means an actual star. Or, in my case, a piece of star that fell to earth. I began my life as a flare shot off from the sun. I was born in a solar storm—or, I suppose I should say, I was part of that storm. The only part to survive."

"But how is that even possible?" How could something so elemental have any sort of consciousness, Hisoka wondered, let alone be able to transform itself into something so physical as the human form sitting across from him?

Apparently, his confusion was a source of some humor to Rikugou. "If you knew how some of the others you've met here started out, you would not find it strange in the least. The origins of shikigami are strange and baffling to no end. Although, to us, the origins of life in the Real World are no less peculiar.

"Suffice it to say, I acquired this form you see before you, without which I would not have lasted long in the world. I would have dissipated, become part of the ionosphere, like my siblings. But in this body I adapted, went native, and integrated myself into Gensoukai society to the best of my ability. And yet, I have always felt the deepest affinity for the heavens, and its suns in particular. I still feel as though they speak to me, if in a language I no longer understand."

"I guess it makes sense you'd be an alien. How many creatures that evolved on Earth, either the real or imaginary one, have six eyes?"

Admittedly, it hadn't been a very nice thing to say. But Rikugou laughed. In fact, it may have been the first genuine, humorous laugh that Hisoka had heard out of him in a very long time. "You'd be surprised how common that sort of thing actually is here. Even bees in your world have five, and some serpents have essentially three. Of course, neither has anything on a clam—

"But I suppose you make a fair point," Rikugou amended when he saw his fun facts weren't helping. "An alien, huh? I never thought of it that way."

"So, you remember your own birth that clearly—which, by the way, practically no human being can do—but you can't remember what the Emperor looked like."

"I know how it sounds to you, but it's true. I have been a long time without him, and have had many masters in the centuries since, each one's face overwriting the one that came before it, whereas the process of my birth shaped me in the most fundamental way.

"What I do know is that I would never have found the will to continue to exist in those early decades if not for the love of the Emperor. For he loved all of us, every creature and every plant that ever grew upon the soil of Gensoukai or flew in its skies, or swam in its oceans. Even those who sinned against him—he may have punished them, deservedly so for the sake of those affected by their crimes, but in his heart he always forgave. That is why I cannot blame Sohryuu for doubting that he really existed, or Kurikara for insisting he didn't. Can such a being truly exist, who has nothing in his heart for others but love?"

Rikugou tucked his hands into their opposite sleeves, as though to warm himself from a sudden cool breeze, and the pensive look came over his features again.

And Hisoka's thoughts went once again (perhaps they hadn't yet left) to the impression of the Golden Emperor in Rikugou's mind, the one with Tsuzuki's face. It seemed to fit. Hisoka, too, knew someone with that same face who at times seemed to have nothing but love for those around him. A bodhisattva, taking lives that had lingered too long, but with kindness, and mercy, telling himself that it is for the best.

No, he couldn't fool himself. Hate and guilt, anger and fear and doubt and sadness found just as much a home in Tsuzuki as any form of love. Just as they did in any human being. Just as they surely must have even in the Emperor, despite how the denizens of this world remembered him. But Hisoka still thought he could understand what Rikugou had seen in his old partner. He could understand how Tsuzuki's better qualities could overlap with those of being of pure love. Because if there was one thing Tsuzuki excelled at to a fault, it was giving of himself.

"Your Emperor does sound a bit like a legendary creature," Hisoka said, hoping that that wasn't what Tsuzuki was going to become, now that he was in Muraki's hands. "Like a unicorn. Or a kirin."

"Yet I hear those are back."

So maybe there was hope for Tsuzuki to come back, too. His Tsuzuki.

"I envy you and Senrima, you know," Rikugou said, "for seeing one. It is said that to see a kirin is to experience the peace of the True God."

Somehow it surprised Hisoka to hear Rikugou, whom he knew as a god himself, who was literally a piece of the sun, speak so. He didn't know why it should. Surely even the most powerful shikigami had a keen sense of what was larger than themselves. "Is there any truth to the legends about them? I mean, does their being here really mean the Emperor is coming back?"

"Maybe he's already here."

Surely Rikugou could guess what Hisoka had to ask next, though it felt blasphemous somehow to even put it into words: "You're not suggesting _I'm_ an incarnation of the Golden Emperor, are you? I mean, all that nonsense about a flowering wind—Sohryuu sure believed it was a bad omen. Did he think it meant I was some sort of Anti-Emperor or something? Could seeing that kirin be a sign that Tsuzuki will come back—I mean, he does command the most powerful of you, how much of a stretch would it be if he was the Emperor incarnate?"

But Rikugou was shaking his head, holding up his hands to slow Hisoka down. "Now you're asking questions I have no answers to. All I know is what I've known from the day I first met you, that you are somehow a key to our world's survival. Or destruction, as the case may be. Sohryuu weighed the same probabilities that I did, and concluded that the risks of what you could do to this world outweighed any potential benefit. I was not comfortable making that decision without more information."

Gee, when he put it that way . . . "Thanks, I think?"

Perhaps seeing he was not getting his point across, Rikugou tried a different way. "It is like bringing a new child into the world. Any child has the potential to do great things when it grows up and into its own power, or to be a tool of destruction, to itself or others. What it will be depends on how it is raised. Which aspects of its nature are nurtured."

"So, that's what this is all about. You see yourself as raising me." And this not long after calling Hisoka an infant. . . .

"I hope my analogy doesn't offend you." But Hisoka felt no offense this time, nor did he believe that Rikugou meant it in a pedantic way. He only hoped the astrologer wasn't raising him like a lamb to be sacrificed. "It's not that I perceive you to be a child, but your powers are yet raw and unformed and subject to influence, like a child's mind would be. Sohryuu, if he had not destroyed you outright, would have nurtured your growth with distrust and self-hate. Not intentionally, perhaps, it would not be in his nature to do so, but he would not have to act with intention to cause great harm. I would see the opposite happen."

"And you don't worry you might be puffing me up with delusions of my own grandeur, what with all this talk about winning Kurikara?"

"No! In the time I have known you, I have seen you fully capable of testing where your own limits lie, and pushing yourself beyond them when you are unsatisfied with the answer."

"And destroying how many lives in the process?" Didn't Rikugou fear that was only what would happen again if Hisoka went after the Dragon King? That he would only make a bad situation worse?

But Rikugou was not about to buy his attempts at self-deprecation. "Don't you see? You do not allow your failures to be the end. You don't give up because you hit a wall, or mire yourself in pity or self-doubt. You redouble your efforts. But moreover, you find a way! _That_ is what this world needs more than anything: solutions! And, yes, it is selfish of me to want to harness that for my own well-being and the well-being of my world. But is that really so wrong? If I can see what great and terrible things you are capable of, is it not my _duty_ to foster the great to the detriment of the terrible?"

Hisoka had never thought of himself in this world that way before. Each time he came here, it seemed to be with such self-serving goals in mind as gaining ever more powerful shikigami, so that he might make himself more powerful when he returned to the real worlds. He had never stopped to wonder how _shikigami_ might try to profit from _him._ Or that it was even possible that he might be a tool in their hands, rather than the wielder. It was a terrifying and equally exhilarating thought.

And with that, Hisoka felt a new sense of urgency. "Is this the part where I invite you into my memories, now?" And did he need to give the shiki advance warning, he wondered, about what he would find in Hisoka's mind? He wasn't sure how much Rikugou knew about his past, particularly where it concerned Muraki, and a particular night of the lunar eclipse. And despite what Rikugou had endured, falling to earth, Hisoka wasn't sure he had experience with the kind of pain Muraki had put him through. Or, for that matter, that that was something Hisoka was ready to share with anyone.

"There will be time for that. When you have regained your strength."

"But I feel fine."

"You may not realize it, but the communion of minds does tax one's system. Nothing a nice meal and a tall glass of water won't fix. And speaking of which," Rikugou said as he got back to his feet, "we should rejoin our friends if we hope to continue making good time and outpacing Sohryuu's allies."

* * *

They made good time toward the desert. When Kijin promised to show them the way, he kept his word.

He flew always ahead of them, a majestic creature that seemed part nightjar and part hawk moth, mottled in stormy grays and blues and violets, who glided along the upper drafts with the silent evenness of a modern-day stealth bomber. Every now and then, he opened his mouth wide, wide as a whale shark sucking in krill, and the discharge of his breath made the very atmosphere ripple and the storm clouds race out of their path, so that though it may rain on either side of them, they enjoyed clear skies all the way.

Like an eagle clutching a fish, Kijin carried Yali in his paws, while his own servant, the iron tiger Suugo no Madara, carried Kazuma and Nonomiya together on his back. That meant occasional layovers—which the two women were grateful for, as it gave them time to stretch and rest their legs. Shinigami had little to worry about from saddle-soreness, but muscles ached after hours spent clinging to a metal body shooting through the air at tremendous speed.

The extra time these rest stops gave them together was another matter. But after another one passed in frigid near-silence, Kazuma could stand it no longer.

When they stopped for the night in a desert canyon, and Nonomiya excused herself to go and search for wood for a fire, Kazuma told Yali to hang back, and seized the chance to accompany her partner herself.

Nonomiya let out a very audible sigh when she realized she couldn't hope to get away from Kazuma this time.

"Kochou, please," Kazuma had to insist, "we've been flying all day, practically in each other's laps, and you can't just let me explain myself to you? My intent was never to abandon you, I swear."

They came to an old tree, long dead and falling apart, and Kazuma hurried to pick up the larger branches. As if the two of them were just animals, she thought with a note of bitter humor, and she was trying to impress Kochou with her firewood gathering skills.

"I just wanted to minimize the damage. I went into that raid with no intention whatsoever of hurting Chief Konoe, or anyone else involved in his break-out, but I couldn't guarantee that someone else from our department might share my concerns. Don't you see? The only way I could ensure a peaceful outcome was if I took charge of the operation myself."

"And I suppose I cancelled out whatever merit points you earned with Chief Todoroki from that, didn't I?" Firewood momentarily forgotten, Nonomiya stood up, and met Kazuma's gaze straight on for what felt like the first time in a long time.

Which was almost worse than not meeting Kazuma's gaze. It meant Kazuma had to see all the hurt and frustration her partner felt dead-on, and feel the responsibility she took for that while Nonomiya was watching. "You could have told me then!" Nonomiya said. "I might have been in a different department, but I wasn't unreachable! Instead, I had to hear everything second-hand, and after the fact—"

"Do you really think that _you_ would have acted any differently, that you would have stayed home that night, if you had just heard my side of the story?"

Nonomiya thought on that for a long moment. "Probably not. But it would have put my conscience at ease. I would have felt better knowing at least the two of us weren't enemies in the whole mess. But I could not allow our chief to send agents with a vendetta against Tsuzuki and Summons into the living world, out in the open like that, knowing there was a very real possibility someone could suffer irreparable harm from it. I had to do _something_. There were better ways that night could have been handled, and you know it. What our department was doing was wrong. I had to take a stand for what I believed was right."

"And I envied you for it!"

That confession took Nonomiya visibly aback. All of a sudden, Kazuma could stand the distance between them no longer. Forgetting about her pile of firewood, she closed the distance between them, reached out to take Nonomiya's hands—

But Nonomiya shied away from her touch. Kazuma felt her heart break a little more inside her, but at least the truth was out now. That weight had been lifted from her. What Nonomiya did with her confession now was no longer hers to decide.

"I envied you for following your conscience, and doing what _I_ thought was right, too! And I regret," Kazuma said, feeling her voice waver, "I regret to the bottom of my soul that I wasn't strong enough to be right there with you, fighting alongside you. I thought that by following our orders and leading that raid, I was doing what was necessary to keep suspicion away from both of us. But I knew they were bad orders. I knew where I wanted to be that night. Where I _should_ have been, when it was all over. It just took me a little longer to get up the courage to admit that to you, and by then it was too late."

"It's never too late for the truth," Nonomiya said in a small voice. It would have rekindled Kazuma's hopes a little more, but it sounded as though her partner were still trying to convince herself of what she had said. She didn't quite believe her own words.

"So, what do you say? Am I forgiven?"

Nonomiya shook her head. "You should have told me, Shin."

But it wasn't a no. Kazuma had been with Nonomiya long enough to know when a shake meant "never" and when it meant "I need to think it over." This seemed much more like the latter. "We ought to get back to the others before the sun goes down."

"Here, let me take those for you," Kazuma said as she reached for Nonomiya's load of sticks. But Nonomiya shrugged off the transparently chivalrous gesture, insisting stubbornly that she was no helpless damsel and could carry her own firewood, thank you very much.

And she was still mad, even after what Shin had said to her. But what Nonomiya couldn't bring herself to admit to her partner was that much of that hurt and that anger she still felt was aimed at herself. She could kick herself for jumping to conclusions about Kazuma's motives, she knew it was unjust to Shin to treat her as though she had acted on reasons that she, in fact, hadn't.

And yet, Nonomiya couldn't just reason away the sense of betrayal she had felt that night, when Kazuma went one way, towards law and order, and Nonomiya the other, toward what could easily have turned into martyrdom. She couldn't be sure either one of their decisions had been justified. She just knew how she felt. And as stubborn as that pain was, as unreasonable it was, it still existed. It was still an obstruction in her way. And though she wished she could clear it away with dynamite and be done with all this heartache, all she had at the moment was an ice pick.

When they returned to camp, they found Yali pacing nervously. "I don't think we should be staying here tonight," he said to Nonomiya's question of what was bothering him. "I have a really bad feeling about this place."

Over by the stone outline of their hearth, Suugo lay stretched out, utterly calm but for the irritated twitch of his ridiculously long tail. It rang each time it came down in the sand like a dropped steel cable bouncing on the ground. "If Master Kijin sees that we'll be safe," he said in his deep, rattling, metallic voice, "then we will be safe."

"It's indefensible!" Yali insisted. "We're sitting in a blind ditch between two high walls, perfect ledges for archers, not to mention all the caves above us where who-knows-what could be hiding, ready to jump out and devour us all!"

The two women glanced up at the pockmarked walls of the canyon. The sun was still up, but where they were was blanketed completely in twilit shadow. Not great for visibility.

"I know this area well," Kijin assured them. "Other than cave swallows, there's nothing in these canyons you need worry about. Trust me. I wouldn't put the two of you in danger, if I could help it. We're all after the same thing here."

Suugo nodded, as if to say "Told you so." "If Master Kijin says it, it's true."

Yali threw up his hands in frustration and stalked off, and Nonomiya hurried after him to try to convince him to trust Kijin and his experience.

But something told Kazuma that Yali's instincts were on to something. She couldn't have explained what it was, but she didn't like the air in this canyon either. And the young shiki's point about their position being indefensible was true, no matter what powers of prophecy anyone might possess. Just what was Kijin thinking that he wasn't sharing with them?

She cast a surreptitious glance his way—though she never truly felt that there was a time Kijin didn't have some kind of eye on her. Perhaps the foreseeing third one that dot in the center of his forehead represented. Kazuma didn't want to assume the worst about him when he'd gone out of his way to help them, even hiding his own motives where Kurosaki was concerned from his father; but it wouldn't hurt to sleep with one eye open tonight, just to make sure.

* * *

That little side trip took up more of the day than Hisoka had at first thought. They reached the hills beyond which the desert began by late afternoon, but decided not to risk the passage over the peaks in the chill of night. Besides, Senrima claimed to have spotted several wormholes on her flight to camp, and no one wanted to risk running across them in the dark, and becoming separated, or lost.

The next day saw a dramatic change. The moisture of the rain forests gave way to the scorching heat of the desert, and its air that seemed to dry a person up from the lungs out.

The shiki took turns carrying Hisoka, with Senrima—who, true to her word, never seemed to tire—galloping along the sand dunes with him on her back while Rikugou coasted over their heads in a state of half-sleep. With each stop along the way and transformation, he looked more like himself, even if it was still strange to see him without his knee-length plait. His color was swiftly coming back, particularly to his clothes, which also were increasing in richness despite the heat, as though he were growing new feathers after a forced molt.

Hisoka would have loved to trade transformative powers with the two shiki for a day or two. Or even travel as secure in his nakedness as K did in hers. After just a day in the desert he was sticky with sweat and sand. The bow and quiver slung across his back and chest—which Senrima had returned to him at the first opportunity—didn't help matters any, and he never had been one to stand the heat in the first place. By some miracle they found a kopje that was hiding a watering hole, and Hisoka was able to beg some private time from the others to go and bathe, and wash the grit out of his clothes.

Despite the heat above ground, the water inside the shelter of the rocks was a mild temperature, just enough to cool Hisoka comfortably, and the boulders provided enough privacy that he even managed to catch a short but rejuvenating nap. He emerged feeling as though he had been purified in mind as well as body.

Rikugou had been quieter than usual during the flight that morning. He didn't speak much while he was flying as a rule, but today the silence sat heavy over both rider and mount, as Rikugou had flown deep in thought. Thoughts he kept well shielded from Hisoka.

By the time he rejoined their camp after his bath, Hisoka was expecting it. "I think it's time we reconnect our minds," Rikugou said. "If you are ready for it."

"You want me to open my mind to you this time, right?" Hisoka didn't think he could ever say he was ready for that, but he knew that if he did not try soon, they would run out of time before they reached their destination. Senrima made quite a few trips into the deep desert and assured them they were very close to the steep wadis of Kurikara's domain now.

"Yes, and no," said Rikugou. "I have a different idea, if you will bear with me. Rather than share your memories as I shared mine, I was hoping we might try to make contact with the being inside you."

Hisoka felt his heart skip a beat. As if the snake-like thing had heard itself mentioned and was waking up from its sleep. "Are you sure?"

Rikugou nodded. "I feel that it must be done, and we are running out of time to do it. You said you wish to know what exactly you are."

"Well, yeah, but—"

"If you're going to face Kurikara, it won't help your chances of winning him to your side if you're divided within yourself."

"But if I try this, and I fail, don't I run the risk of going to Kurikara in an even weaker position?"

Rikugou lowered his eyes. "I had considered that. But a weighing of the risks tells me that the greater risk is not to try. You may find within you an even greater strength than you knew you were capable of. You survived my fire, as well as the injuries Futsu no Mitama dealt you when you first came here, neither of which should have been possible. It's time we discover the reason, once and for all. But it will not be easy. I would not recommend you doing this if there is even a chance you might give up as you did when I challenged you."

That episode still caused Hisoka a sharp twinge of shame. To think that he could have sunk so deep into his despair as to want to give up entirely. Not just on himself, but on Tsuzuki, and everyone else who had sacrificed for his sake. From where he stood now, that seemed like a different Hisoka, one he no longer wanted to be.

But was he sure he wanted to be the sort of person this experiment might cause him to become?

"What's this, then?" Senrima, who had been listening along in respectful silence, put her hands on her hips. "You having second thoughts, Kurosaki? 'Cause I'd think there was something wrong with you if you weren't."

That wasn't really helping to alleviate Hisoka's misgivings any, though.

"Hey," she tried when she saw his furrowed brow, "you can do this. So what if you're scared? That's only human. But the Kurosaki I know, the one who made it through all the trials and illusions the Fortress of Dreams could throw at him, he wouldn't let himself be defeated by a little mind worm."

"Thanks," Hisoka told her.

"It's the King Worm that comes after you gotta be afraid of."

Rikugou shot her a warning glare. "Let's just focus on one opponent at a time, shall we?" He turned back to Hisoka, projecting calm and confidence. "In practice, this will be just like when I let you into my mind to share my memories, except for one major difference. We will not be revisiting some past event. You will be conscious, but in your own head. Somewhat like a lucid dream, though with even more control over your surroundings. If the situation becomes too dangerous, you can sever our connection and reawaken at any time."

Hisoka shook his head, as though he could feel Rikugou sharing it with him already. "I still don't like the sound of this." But he didn't see what choice he had either. He had to face the monster inside him sooner or later—and sooner was better.

But he was afraid. For all he made it sound as though he didn't particularly care whether he was human or not, the truth was that he _did_ care. Very much. Not knowing what he was, he was like a leaf blowing on the breeze. As long as he never touched ground, he was fine; but it was inevitable that he _would_ come down, and not knowing where or how was terrifying. He could not say whether he was ready to accept whatever answer he found, but he had to look inside himself, at this thing.

In this journey he was on, he had reached a door at the end of a hallway. He had to confront it, he had to open that door and step through, or he could not move on.

They encamped for the night, and beside the low fire, with K and Senrima watching on, Hisoka let Rikugou take his wrists, and step with him into his own mind.

The cherry grove on his family's property at night, the trees in full bloom, tinted by the blood-red light of a lunar eclipse. . . .

"Don't think about it," Rikugou said. He stood beside Hisoka in that landscape in an oversized trench—almost looking like Muraki himself with the light glinting off his glasses, if not for the long, thick braid that trailed over one shoulder and the extra pair of eyes. "Stay focused, and in the present. We are not here for this memory."

"Not that I want to revisit it anyway." It was something Hisoka simply could not help. Such a traumatic event, which had made him what he was today—it did not give up its hold on him so easily.

But here, now, he was in control. And Rikugou's consciousness there beside his only helped him to reshape their surroundings. The red cast to the landscape slowly faded, changed to the pale green of a normal full moon. It illuminated the overgrown grasses, and seemed to point out a trail through them, as though highlighting the residue of footsteps taken in his dreams. "The lake is this way," he indicated for Rikugou to follow him. "That's where we'll find it."

"You're sure?"

"That's how I see it in my dreams. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but I know it's there. I can feel it." If he closed his eyes and just listened, he could hear it calling as though from beneath still waters. Taunting him. Like a lure. He hardly felt the weeds scratch his legs as he let it reel him in. The weeds, the landscape, everything, it was all in his mind, after all. "It's like . . . like catching yourself humming a song, and you don't even know you're doing it. And you know you know the song—obviously, or you wouldn't be humming it—but you've forgotten what it is and where you heard it."

Rikugou seemed not to like the sound of that. "I don't hear anything. Wait—"

It was the first splash of water around Hisoka's sneakers that made the shiki call out to him in warning. Hisoka waited for him to catch up. "You must let me speak to it first," Rikugou said, an uncharacteristic anxiety working its way into his voice. "If I can get a sense of what kind of entity we're dealing with, I can coach you on how to approach it. Besides, I have been here before. I touched it."

"You were inside my mind? Why wasn't I aware of that?"

"I did it while you were sleeping. Don't worry, I didn't look into any thoughts or memories that were private," Rikugou said when he saw the look of betrayal on Hisoka's face. Never mind that all his thoughts and memories should have been deemed private, Hisoka thought. "I was merely curious. I had to know what piece of the puzzle I was missing. Why the stars kept indicating things about you that seemed to make no sense, that were contradictory. Why, when I asked them for advice in how to deal with the problem of you, they always came back to the constellation of Draco."

"The Dragon?" Somehow that made a sort of sense.

Rikugou nodded. "At first I thought it was a reference to Kurikara, seeing as you were so eager to run off and meet him the first time you came here, or possibly even a warning of Sohryuu's animosity toward you. But upon further reflection, I surmised it must be something else. Draco is also a serpent—a chaos monster, to be exact, who once turned the axis of the sky, before the Earth's tilt shifted him off-center. Draco represents primordial forces—forces that are hidden, or within, as a cave represents the womb of the earth or a passage to deeper truths. Truths about our origins, and the most fundamental questions of our existence."

"You think it was a reference to this thing inside me." It wasn't a question. The answer was clear enough to Hisoka without need for confirmation. "You had no right to peer inside my head without my permission, Rikugou. But," the damage was already done, and if it resulted in something useful, "if you touched it, like you said, then don't you know what it is?"

The shiki shook his head. "I have some idea. But if I am right, the implications are grotesque, horrible to entertain. I don't see how a denizen of this world could compromise his or her ethics to such an extent. Also, it would not be able to hide itself from me so effectively if it were a shikigami. You've seen with Kokushungei and your colleague how, though they share a body in your world, they remain separate individuals in mine."

Hisoka shrugged. "That rules out parasitic shiki, then." Which was somewhat of a relief. "So if it's not something from here, does that mean it's a demon, or something even worse than that?"

But as soon as those words were out of his mouth, a pillar of black water erupted from the lake and rose straight into the air. Hisoka hadn't even time to suck in a breath to hold before it collapsed on top of him, pulling him straight down through the water and mud and soil into darkness. The last thing he knew was Rikugou shouting his name—before that too was disturbingly cut short.

* * *

It felt to Rikugou as though he had been hit by a truck. Or, to be fair, what he imagined such a thing, commonly spoken of as a means of comparison by humans, would feel like, as there were no trucks in his world. One moment he was standing on the marshy banks of the lake within arm's reach of Hisoka. The next, he was slammed back to consciousness in his own skull, gasping for breath as Senrima's worried face peered uncomfortably close into his.

"I take it that wasn't supposed to happen," she said.

"No. It was not." Rikugou held his head as he sat up, and shooting pain had him seeing stars. For that matter, he did not remember lying down. It must have been the same force that ejected him from Hisoka's mind that had pushed them apart, as if by some explosion of electrical energy.

He crawled to Hisoka, who had fallen onto his back as well, his eyes still closed as though in sleep. Rikugou could see them moving beneath their lids, and could watch the rise and fall of Hisoka's breath, but that was little consolation. He touched a hand gently to Hisoka's forehead, tried to reenter his mind, but it was walled off to him by the same impenetrable, scaled coils that had thwarted Rikugou before. This was bad, no matter how he looked at it. Very bad. K sat on Hisoka's chest and licked his chin in in an attempt to wake him, but of course it didn't work.

"He's still in his own mind." Rikugou sat back on his heels, feeling hope drain out of him as fast as he tried to build it back up again. "Damn it! That thing has him, it's pulled him deeper inside himself and he's all alone with it! I can't believe I let myself be tossed out on my ear like a stray cat. Sorry, K, poor choice of metaphor."

"Should we splash some water on him?" Senrima offered.

But Rikugou urged her with all the feeling he could muster _not_ to do that. "Wake him up now, and we don't know what kind of shape he'll come back to us in. We could tear his mind in half if that thing has a good enough grip on him in there. Or worse, the Kurosaki who wakes up might be under that entity's control. No. Right now there's nothing we can do but hope he can find his own way back to consciousness. And wait."

* * *

A curious, high-pitched cry woke Kazuma from her light sleep. At first she thought she had just dreamed it, as minutes passed and she didn't hear it again, but she knew better than to doubt her instincts.

Wide awake now, she crawled over to where Nonomiya lay, whispering her name. Yali, who was curled against his mistress in animal form, keeping her warm, raised his leonine head and nudged Nonomiya awake with his nose. "Did you hear it too?" he asked Kazuma.

Then she was right: She hadn't dreamt it. "What was it? Cave swallows?"

"I don't think so," said Yali. "It sounded kinda like mice. Really big mice. I hope it's just mice. I'm starving. . . ."

That was just great, Kazuma thought, as she tried to peer through the dark around them. Even with a moon bright in the sky, the canyon where they had set up camp for the night remained in shadow, only the tops of the cliffs and hoodoos illuminated in stark contrast. And with them, the entrances of caves that dotted this desert landscape like Swiss cheese. Kijin may have assured them that only birds inhabited those caves, but Kazuma only had his word to take for it.

And speaking of . . . "Where's Kijin?" Nonomiya said groggily, as she wiped sleep from her eyes.

That was a good question. Their fire had died down to embers in the night, and the young man who was supposed to be their guide was nowhere to be—

"Right here," came his reassuring voice at their backs, and both the shinigami let out audible sighs of relief. And fright. "Don't sneak up on folks like that!" Kazuma told him. "A person could wet themselves. . . ."

She could practically hear his blush in the moment of silence that followed. Probably wasn't used to that kind of talk at court. "Suugo and I were just scouting the area." Sure enough, the metallic clanging of Suugo's footsteps followed close behind as Kijin went back to his place beside the fire. The youth's cloudy eyes seemed to possess a reflected glow in the low light, like cat's eyes. Suugo's _did_ glow, but with an inner fire. "You three might want to get up. I don't want to alarm you, but it appears we're not alone."

"What!" Nonomiya hissed, and Yali cursed under his breath, "I told you I didn't like this place, I told you we shouldn't stop here—"

"But Kijin knows what he's doing," Kazuma said, though not without a healthy hint of sarcasm. She got out her handgun for good measure, and checked her clip. "Ain't that right? He's looking out for Hisoka's best interest, so if he says this is the way the kid was heading, we don't have much choice but to follow, do we?"

Kijin nodded his thanks for the vote of confidence. "This is the quickest way to him, without a doubt."

"Still," Kazuma added, "if it's all the same to you, I think everyone's awake enough to get a head start on the day and get out of here."

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she again heard the weird screech that had woken her up. And this time, there was an answering cry.

Kazuma raised her pistol, trying desperately to peer through the dark to find the source of the sound. She thought she saw a shadow move over here, something disappear into one of the holes that riddled the cliffs over there. Something long, and spiny.

And then the eyes, winking on in the darkness two at a time. Then four, then eight at a time. So many eyes. They were being surrounded, fast, and she still couldn't tell by what. But she could hear the scuffling, in the sand and against the rocky cliffs. Dozens, hundreds of quick feet, belonging to large bodies—

"Don't fire!" Kijin commanded when Kazuma raised her pistol. "They will do you no harm, so long as you give them no reason to."

Give _what_ no reason, Kazuma wanted to ask, but then one of the creatures stepped out of the shadow and she couldn't speak a word. The only thought that ran through her mind was an instinctual _Kill it, kill it, kill it._ But the thing stared at her with a human face and human eyes—even if there were eight of said eyes and its mustache looked disturbingly like a pair of functional fangs. And the massive body that stepped into view behind that face was the body of a giant, hairy ground spider. No way Kazuma was going to lower her pistol with _that_ thing coming at her.

She didn't have a choice. A pair of strong metal arms wheeled Kazuma around and wrenched the pistol from her hand. She tried to tear herself free, but it was like fighting against the Terminator, or Gort. Suugo's iron-plated humaniform body pinned her arms to her sides and held her fast, his robotic mask of a face impassive and unsympathetic as it stared down at her.

Yali growled, and Nonomiya cried, "Shin!" She had fuda at the ready—

But Kijin sent a bolt of lightning that zapped the paper charm right from her fingers, and swirled her up where she stood in a gust of wind, trapping her in her own personal, electrically-charged cyclone.

Yali prepared himself to leap at his mistress's attacker, his teeth and tusks bared at Kijin, but Nonomiya shouted, "Yali, run away! Get out of here, that's an order!" She knew she was sending away her last line of defense, but the young shiki stood no chance against those as powerful as Kijin and Suugo. And even if Kijin wasn't lying about the spiders not hurting her and Kazuma, she still couldn't be sure that immunity would extend to him, and she couldn't bear seeing Yali hurt on her account.

It looked like it just about killed him to leave her side at her moment of need. But an order was an order; he could not disobey. With a roar of frustration, Yali turned tail and ran past the giant spiders into the night, the tortured look on his face the last Nonomiya and Kazuma saw of him.

"What's the meaning of this, Kijin?" Kazuma said as the spiders closed in. "You swore to us you would help! I thought we were on the same side!"

"Honestly, I couldn't care less about sides." The youth's voice was calm, despite the terrors that surrounded them, entirely in command. As if even this had been his plan from the beginning. Scratch that, thought Kazuma: It _must have been_ his plan from the beginning. "And helping is precisely what I'm doing. I swore to help Lord Kurosaki, and that means I mustn't let anyone come between him and his destiny. Not even the two of you."

"To think, we trusted you!" Nonomiya gasped, and even Kazuma stopped her struggling. "You snot-nosed little shit," the latter growled, no longer caring if she was talking to a god, "you were just using us!"

"It's true. And I appreciate the sacrifice you two are about to make. I have negotiated a deal with the tsuchigumo," Kijin said of the giant spiders. "They will take us safely to Kurikara by the fastest route, through their underground lair. Upon our arrival, I will present the two of you to the Dragon King as hostages of peace, as I sign of my good will."

"Good will?" Kazuma could have laughed.

"Yes," Kijin said, quite humorlessly. "To prove to him that I am serious about brokering an end to this war. With or without my father's approval. You two will be there to ensure I remain civil while doing so. If I should break my oath of peace while in his court, any attack from me or my servant may be considered an act of war, and Kurikara may choose to do with you as he will. But should he or a member of his court lay a hand upon either of you without just cause, they do so at their own peril, for I will bring the full brunt of my father's justice to bear upon them."

Sure, Kazuma thought, that made her feel _so_ much better. As long as none of these prideful, quick-to-anger shikigami started a fight amongst themselves, she and Nonomiya would be just fine. What could she possibly have to fear in Kijin's good care? "You're as mad as Sohryuu is!"

It was the sort of accusation that might have brought swift retribution from a different shiki. But Kijin only grinned. "I can assure you, Miss Kazuma, I have been mad before, but I am not now. My mind and the path forward are clearer than they have been in a long time.

"And now I must suggest that you ladies come along willingly. If you do so, you may be allowed to walk on your own feet. But if you try to run, the tsuchigumo will be forced to wrap you up and carry you to Kurikara on their backs." The man-spiders in question squeaked in their mousy language and clacked their fangs, and Kazuma had no doubt any one of them would run her down in seconds if she tried to escape. "The choice if yours."

Not much of a choice. Kazuma really didn't want to follow giant spiders _anywhere_ , let alone through creepy underground tunnels, and to her own possible demise; and she doubted Nonomiya was any more enthusiastic about the idea than she was. But if there was anything worse, it was being dragged along against her will, with any single part of those spiders touching her.

She opted to walk.

* * *

Darkness surrounded him.

And water. He could feel its weight, its viscosity, all around him, and he couldn't tell up from down, couldn't even get free of the coils around his legs. His lungs burned from holding his breath, and he knew that even if they filled with water, his death would only be temporary. But he had no wish to experience a drowning. He wasn't a collector of deaths. Though if he did nothing, he would pass out in seconds. He was already seeing flashes across his vision upon that wall of matte black.

Then it hit him: This was all in his head. He was only as submerged in water as he wanted to be. And at that thought, he gasped for breath, and sucked down air.

Air—but also hate. An intense and righteous anger like he hadn't felt even from Muraki, that kept him more firmly in its grasp than any physical coils. This was a hate that went back a thousand years, a thirst for vengeance the vintage of which was so potent it was as though when he inhaled, that loathsome feeling filled him up inside, leaching into every corner of his person. It made him feel ill to the core, yet he could not retch it back out, could not even scream. What good would that have done him anyway? There was no one to hear him within the confines of his own subconscious.

" _So. Now, at last, you come to meet me, face to face. The soul wishes to know itself, and be known. After only . . . what? Twenty-three years of sharing a vessel?_ "

The voice enveloped Hisoka and filled him, seeming to originate in his own mind.

But it _was_ his own mind, he reminded himself. The coils that surrounded him, beginning to come into focus the harder he fought to tune his eyes to the darkness—they were as much a part of him as his own thoughts, his own memories. When he demanded of the darkness, "Who am I talking to?" he should have expected it when the haughty answer returned to him from everywhere: " _Yourself._ "

"You're the yatonokami." The other consciousness must have hated the name—or hearing him speak it anyway, if the recoil Hisoka could feel in it was any indication. "The one from the legends the people in my village talked about. I thought those were just stories. But if the stories were true, you should have been destroyed long ago, by my ancestor, Kurosaki no Ren—"

" _FOOL!_ " The word resonated in his bones, made his head ring. " _You know nothing about what you speak of! Though we share a body, a mind, a soul, still you wander in the dark, grasping for answers you do not truly seek! Perhaps you would rather believe what you choose to believe. Yet once you spoke to me as your only friend, until you let yourself be convinced I was but a figment of your imagination."_

"That was you?" Hisoka had all but forgotten that. He had been so young then. How many adventures he and his imaginary playmate had invented, the secrets they passed each other while they played near the marsh. He had tried to introduce his friend to his mother one day, and she, terrified like he had never seen her before that Hisoka was speaking of the ghost of some young girl, had forbidden him from ever mentioning it again. That was long before he ever learned about the sister who died before he was born.

" _It was easier to internalize my voice, wasn't it? And then tune it out completely. So much easier to deny my very existence than to face the sin of your hated ancestor—the sin of your own being."_

But Hisoka shook his head. Whatever game the serpent was playing with him, he did not want to participate. He strained to see it more clearly, but like something in his dream, the more he tried to focus on any particular feature, the more it seemed to fade into the darkness. Hiding from him.

"I don't want to deny you any more," he told it. "I couldn't even if I wanted to. I want to know what I am—what _we_ are." That seemed to earn him a hiss of amusement from the serpent, or at least curiosity. "I've seen what living in denial about what you really are does to a soul. I don't want that to happen to me."

" _Or can't afford it to. That doesn't change that what I am terrifies you. I disgust you—_ "

"How can I be disgusted if I can't even see you?"

Hisoka should have known that the yatonokami would take his words as a challenge. He had always envisioned his imaginary friend as looking like himself. But what rushed toward him, parting the dark fog, was the head of a massive snake, its fangs bared and dripping with venom, multiple tongues writhing like octopus arms in its maw. He could feel its eagerness to sink those fangs into his flesh, its hatred of anything Kurosaki. He prepared himself for pain, for the fire of its poison.

" _You forget we share a mind,_ " echoed the voice inside his head as the creature menaced him, but it did not bite.

It was the eyes more than those wicked teeth that Hisoka feared looking too deeply into, and from which he couldn't turn away. Bright, electric green set in putrid gray-black. The same eyes Watari had seen in Hisoka's charred face.

" _You flatter with words, but I see your true heart. And in it you despise me. You despise what I have made you. These gifts that I have bestowed on you, your powers of the mind, your tenacity, this great honor of sharing your existence with the Sword of Night—you wish I had never chosen you for it. You wish you had never been born."_

"Chosen?" The rest, Hisoka could deal with later. "What do you mean, you chose me?"

A slew of emotions flared up that made Hisoka reel. The sheer wrath of the thing, and the pride. What vile things that creature had done over a thousand years of terrorizing his family's village. He only wished he could say they were unimaginable. Hisoka pressed his palms to his head, though he could not shut them out, could not stop them from flowing through him like film through a projector.

" _That blasphemer Nagare thought he could outwit me!"_ came the answer Hisoka had not been expecting. " _He thought he could rob me of that which was due me by divine right! Did he really believe he was capable of it—a mere mortal, that weak, impetuous man? Outwit me—a god?_

" _You never knew, did you?"_ The serpent seemed to snicker at Hisoka's confusion. _"You poor creature—you never knew that your parents never wanted you. You were never supposed to exist. The curse,_ my _curse, was supposed to end with him. At least, that was how Nagare planned it, knowing it would thwart all my plans to carry out my vengeance on the Kurosaki line into perpetuity. He planned to die without an heir and take the last of Ren's bloodline with him. If not for Rui's ignorance of the true nature of the Kurosaki curse, her eagerness to honor the man she loved with male issue and redeem her sister's failures, I might never have pulled it off. . . ."_

Pulled _what_ off, Hisoka thought.

But no sooner had the question crossed his mind than he wished it hadn't. Images flashed across his mind he could have done without, of a man who looked like a younger version of his father brought to his knees, a young woman who had his mother's face forcing herself upon him—or perhaps she was being forced just as much as he against her will to carry out this unholy act, already too far out into the ocean of that household's sin to swim back to shore. He saw the two of them entwined in passion, in terror, fearing painful retributions. Watching over their shoulders, like two naked dolls made to act out some sick puppeteer's fantasy. Only in this case, there were no hands controlling the strings, only incorporeal coils, living ropes, snaking around the couple, pushing, squeezing, penetrating what was never meant to be penetrated—

Hisoka felt he was going to be sick. It was just flashes, but of things no one is ever meant to see. It was more than enough for the yatonokami to make his meaning clear. "You made me," Hisoka heard himself saying, as though the words belonged to someone else. As though they were being dragged from as deep a place inside himself as his father's reluctant seed had been dragged from him. He saw himself as an egg in his mother's womb, fertilized, and infected with that dark worm, that evil virus. All duplicating in harmony inside the same cell membrane. "When they wouldn't willingly give you the heir you wanted, you made one yourself."

" _Yesssss._ " The serpent hissed a laugh. " _It was the only way I could guarantee my survival, but it has worked in ways I could never have anticipated. In creating you, I only hoped to create a vessel that would obey me, that would become my vehicle in the outside world, freeing me once and for all from the tether of my curse. You would not die of my influence, as your father did, and his father before him. Over time, I would adapt you to suit my needs until, eventually, our body became perfected."_

It was a horrible future the yatonokami showed to him, of an adult version of himself, his skin sloughing away to reveal scales underneath, his body elongating, teeth stretching into fangs, stretching into a true abomination . . .

Next to what he had glimpsed of his own ruined body from Watari's mind, however, that vision did not inspire the terror it was meant to. What did it matter if that was what the yatonokami had planned for him? It never came to fruition. He wasn't sure it still could. But Hisoka would make sure, if he had to die his final death to do it, that it never would.

" _When that man killed you, that Muraki, it could easily have been the end. But, no. Enma made you a shinigami, and gave us this new, beautiful immortal body. In doing so, he has made me invincible—"_

"I will never let you have this body," Hisoka swore under his breath.

And as he did so, he felt the hilt of a sword materialize in the palm of his hand. Why not? He was of the blood of Ren, the god-slayer. It seemed appropriate that here, in his own mind, where he controlled reality, that should be the symbol that appeared to him in the company of the demon snake. He plunged the blade deep into the yatonokami's flanks—

And had the breath knocked out of him as stabbing pain tore through his own gut. He put his hand to the source of the pain, somehow not surprised when, despite there being no weapon to have made the wound, his fingers encountered the wet heat of blood.

And through its own agony, the snake just laughed. _"You cannot hurt me without hurting yourself!_ _We are one entity, and always have been. Two consciousnesses, inside the same mind. Two souls sharing one vessel. Kill me and you will perish."_

"More like a foreign invader," Hisoka hissed as he clutched at his wound.

But he knew he couldn't think that way. He remembered Kijin's words—now they seemed like a warning. Chaos gains a way in when rational beings set theirs minds against one another. A part of him wanted to fight back against the serpent, to refute and refuse it at every turn. That part of him that was Ren's descendant wanted to destroy the yatonokami if it took until his dying breath to do it. For what his parents had suffered, he deserved vengeance. Just as he deserved justice for what had been done to him.

But he could not lower himself to giving in to the yatonokami's taunts, or he would never be worthy of Kurikara, let alone Tsuzuki, or even his own revenge against Muraki. Though it seemed to take more willpower than Hisoka had, he had to fight—not against the yatonokami, but against its hatred, its anger, its fear.

Ignoring the pain in his gut—and finding it fading fast when he did so—Hisoka straightened up to his full height. "If we _are_ one, as you say, and Enma's made you invincible, then we both are. Muraki may have thwarted your plans for my body, but you still have some control over it. You saved me from Rikugou's fire."

" _Simple self-preservation,_ " the serpent spat. _"Do not read charitable feelings into it when they were not there—"_

"It doesn't matter." But it did matter that it bothered Yatonokami so, the accusation that he had _saved_ Hisoka. Not just his vessel, as the snake liked to term it, but Hisoka's existence. His soul. "You took over, even if just briefly, and kept me from perishing when I could have been completely destroyed. Maybe it wasn't compassion, maybe it was entirely self-serving, but you did it nonetheless. At great pain to yourself."

" _And to you._ " Still the yatonokami took some relish from that.

Which Hisoka struggled to quench, as it meant he reveled in that pain, too. "To both of us." He tried to summon up that memory of the Emperor that Rikugou had shown him, and the compassion he had felt in it. He tried to embody that now, though it was a struggle. "Muraki caused you a great deal of pain as well. Didn't he? I'm not talking about his frustrating your plans, either."

The serpent's sudden hiss told him he was not far off the mark at all with that one. Hisoka wasn't the only one who had been violated that night.

"I always wondered how I could bear such pain and not die from the shock. He claimed it was in the spells he wrote into me, but now I wonder if maybe you had something to do with my surviving for so long. You took some of that pain for me, didn't you? When I just wanted it all to end, you wanted desperately to live—"

" _Everything I worked so hard over centuries to put in place that man undid in one night!"_ Yatonokami screamed as the detestable truth could not be contained within him any longer. _"I deserved to be reborn! I was patient, generations of Kurosakis were born and died before I could enact my plan. I endured such humiliations in order to achieve my revenge. How_ _dare_ _that mortal scum think he could rob me of it at the hour of my satisfaction! Yes, I wanted to live! Nagare and his bitch sister-wives were not penance enough for the sins committed against me by that man. I would have slain that entire village and ancient promises be damned if it would have defeated that Muraki devil's curse!"_

And there we have it, Hisoka thought in triumph, even as the yatonokami's rage filled him up inside until he wanted to explode with it. He pitied the yatonokami. For an almighty god, it was as powerless in the face of its pain as an infant crying for its mother. Even a viper forever trailing around the egg it couldn't hatch out of was a pitiable creature.

Can anyone really hate something so pathetic? Just this very night, before jumping down this rabbit hole, Hisoka would have said yes. Of course he could. Why would feeling sorry for the snake change anything that had happened to him? Why should he try to forgive acts committed against him that he had done nothing to deserve? Save for being born a Kurosaki, that is, but Hisoka was not nearly enough of a Buddhist to think the onus of that sin was truly on himself.

Only now that he was here, hearing his own rage over his murder come out in the yatonokami's voice, did he truly understand. His anger was still there. That wasn't the point.

It wasn't his to bear alone. It never had been.

The sword had vanished from his hand. With empty palm, he reached out to lay it upon the snake's scales, and feel them, truly feel them, for the first time. This horrible creature, this being of sin, moved with warm breath and blood the same as he did, behind a skin as hard and sleek as a steel suit made by a master armorer. But even that armored hide had been pierced, etched with ancient, evil words that glowed red and raw like veins through marble, words that promised only pain. If Hisoka was able to pity himself, if he was able to forgive himself, couldn't he extend the same grace to this thing that bore the exact same scars he did—this thing that _was_ himself?

"I'm sorry—"

The serpent's head whipped around at that gentle touch, and it bit down on Hisoka's hand. It took Hisoka so by surprise that he couldn't even cry out as he felt the needle-like fangs impale muscle and bone. " _You have done enough!"_ its thoughts drilled straight into Hisoka's mind. " _Surrender this body!_ "

"Never!" Hisoka breathed through the pain, feeling as though the teeth were twisting his nerves around themselves like spindles. "You're a menace! I can see everything you've done—all those people you made to suffer before Ren cut you down." And the yatonokami would do it all again, if it was allowed to control a body of its own.

That Hisoka couldn't allow, as long as he had strength in him to fight, to keep the serpent sealed within him. "Your kind deserved to be hunted to extinction. You deserve to be locked up forever!"

The yatonokami roared what it thought of that. The lines of Muraki's curse flared lava-red beneath its scales. " _If you will not surrender it to me, then I will take this vessel by force, as I always intended to do!_ "

Hisoka hadn't thought it possible, but the yatonokami bit down even harder on his hand. Then he did cry out, and dropped to his knees as the serpent wrenched its head and Hisoka along with it. But it was Konoe's face that appeared behind his squeezed-shut eyelids, and Tatsumi's, Watari's and Wakaba's and Terazuma's—Rikugou's and Tsuzuki's. He could not let himself be defeated, for their sakes. If he failed, he did not just fail himself. And compared to that, this pain, sharp as it was, was nothing.

"I won't let you," he gritted out through the agony, staring straight into those hated eyes. "I won't let you take it from me. We are one and the same, always have been, and you can't tear out a piece of yourself and erase it any more than I can erase you. You need me. I'm all you have left!"

The serpent's rage was intense. It seethed, roiled within him, as his own flesh seethed in those jaws.

But Hisoka knew he was right. The yatonokami's thoughts were his thoughts, and he knew that what he had just spoken was what it feared the most. The truth. The circumstances of his death had sealed off the serpent's power. Now it needed him, as much as, if not more than, Hisoka needed it. What remained, though strong enough to survive Rikugou's light, was still only a vestige of what the yatonokami once was, and it was wholly dependent on Hisoka to maintain its meager existence.

"But I have a deal to make with you," Hisoka told it. "One that would benefit us both. If you'd swallow your pride long enough to hear it."

* * *

Hours had passed since their connection had been broken, and in that time the heavens had tilted, and changed. Though he knew there were always multiple ways the stars could be read, Rikugou liked none of what he saw there.

He felt K jump up from where she had been napping on Hisoka's chest. Her eyes wide, ears and whiskers pointed forward and on alert. Which in itself was not the best sign. Cats and snakes were age-old enemies. If her alarm was a sign that something else was returning to consciousness, Rikugou had best be prepared to act fast to contain it.

He looked down at Hisoka, whose head was pillowed in Rikugou's lap. Hours had gone by where the only change in him had been to his heart rhythm. But now the boy began to stir, his brain waves returning to wakefulness. Senrima, in her restless pacing, noticed the other two's concern and hurried to their sides. "Is he . . ." She was going to say "coming to" but changed it to "Is it still him?"

That Rikugou wished he could answer. "Master Kurosaki? Can you hear me?" He pressed his fingers to Hisoka's temples, searching for a way in. A way to make sure. But he was still locked out. "Please tell me that's you, Master Kurosaki."

"Don't call me that," the boy mumbled as he groggily sat up, and rubbed his eyes.

The shikigami exchanged concerned looks. "What should I call you?" Rikugou asked cautiously.

"Why not just 'Hisoka'? You never had a problem with it the first time I came here."

Senrima let out a squeal of relief at that and threw her arms around him, knocking Hisoka back to the ground. K didn't waste any time adding herself to the love pile, stepping all over Hisoka with her poky little cat feet and rubbing her whole body in his face, purring madly all the while.

"What happened to you in there?" Rikugou was desperate to know once the females had had their fun.

Hisoka's answer of "I met an old friend" was no more illuminating.

"It's a long story," he told Rikugou when he saw the frustration on his shiki's face—as few things frustrated Rikugou more than not having the solution to mystery when someone else did. "I'll fill you in on everything I know. And then we need to discuss plans. I have an idea I want your opinion on, for when I meet Kurikara."

* * *

 ** _More Gensoukai notes._** _So, Suugo no Madara is a servant of sorts of Kijin in the manga, based on a mythical tiger or tiger-like beast called Zouyu, and has powers similar to Senrima (extreme speed, long-distance endurance, flight) but in feline form. I'm guessing when I call him iron, but he does have a mechanical body, judging by the sound effects, and can land on all fours like a rocket. You never see him in human form, who knows if he's even meant to have one, but I like to think if he did, it would look like a robot._

 _I'm totally guessing on Kijin's animal form. All I have to go on is he's a storm god and says his true form is ugly compared to his dad's (so modest). So naturally I thought of a thunderbird mixed with Mothra. Nightjars and hawk moths are just two extant creatures I think overlap well visually and can evoke storms and prophecy, but I'm in no ways arguing it's canon. Likewise with Rikugou's origin story._

 _Tsuchigumo, on the other hand, are monsters from actual Japanese folklore, and you can read more about them on Wikipedia, if drawings of giant spiders with human faces don't creep you out._


	21. Lose control

The front of the house was entirely gone. Part of the upper story had caved into it, and splintered support beams stuck out like ribs from a half-eaten carcass. Even weeks later, even after summer downpours, they retained their charred-black patina.

Which made the contrast all the eerier: To the kitchen, there was almost a clear view. Its colors stood out brilliantly against the ruin around it, only somewhat darkened by smoke and dust. The rotted remains of a last meal still sat on the table—what little the crows had left of it.

Across the street, demolition equipment sat idle in the shower, next to a block of houses with burnt facades and blasted-out windows. Between them, the pavement rolled in melted waves, broke and sunken here and there like the aftermath of some cataclysmic earthquake. Puddles splashed around Oriya's designer shoes, but it would have been callous to complain of their damage next to that which surrounded him. It was unbelievable, what he was seeing. Not just how total but how completely isolated the destruction had been.

How could this have happened, and he was only now learning of it? A disaster of this magnitude occurred in a peaceful residential neighborhood in the heart of Tokyo, and it never made the news?

"Excuse me! Excuse me, sir! You shouldn't be here."

Oriya turned to see a man in hard hat and reflective vest jogging through the rain toward him. Only as he got close did Oriya notice he wore underneath those the uniform of a police officer.

"This is a highly dangerous area," the officer said. "Didn't you notice the tape?"

He gestured to that which had been strung across what remained of Ukyou's front gate. Yes, Oriya had noticed it, when he ducked underneath it to come inside the garden. Just as he had noticed the barricades, and the warning signs up the street. Dangerous levels of radiation, they all warned; but judging by this officer's lack of protective gear, that was probably more to keep the public out than anything else.

"I knew the woman who lived here," Oriya said by way of explanation, knowing it wouldn't excuse this intrusion but needing information. Any information. If the officer had any empathy in him, maybe he would understand enough to provide that. "She was all but family to me. Can't you tell me what happened to her?"

The officer vacillated for a moment, but must have decided that question wasn't too sensitive to answer. "No idea. We never retrieved any bodies from this house."

"Then she's still alive?"

Oriya couldn't help himself. The weight of his dread upon seeing what remained of Ukyou's home, like a boulder sitting in his gut . . .

He hadn't thought there was any reason to hope until now.

Still, the officer shook his head. "I can't answer that, sir. This house was closest to the epicenter. If your friend was inside at the time, it's possible there weren't any remains left to find."

"But you can't be _sure._ Can you?" That wasn't much to go on, and judging by the way the officer shifted on his feet, Oriya was probably being unrealistically optimistic. But after seeing the things he had seen, he had reason to treat a person as alive until he saw hard proof of their demise.

A burst of color caught his eye. A rose bush still standing behind the officer, against the crumbling garden wall. The others had all been flash-burnt, but that one must have been sheltered enough for a few of its canes to survive. It bloomed still, even if it was just clinging to life.

"Exactly what happened here?"

"That I can't tell you," said the officer; and Oriya could sense from his tone and posture that, on this, he would not be budged. "This is the site of an ongoing investigation, on top of which, we have reason to believe it's contaminated. For your own safety, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."

Oriya was willing to comply then. He had learned all he was going to here. The ruins only served to remind him of the fragility of loved ones' lives, how tenuously they intersected his own and how suddenly they could be torn away.

But they did give him some idea of where to turn next.

* * *

Cups rattled violently in their saucers when Sakaki set the tray down hard on the table. "Sir, I must implore you to give up on this damn-fool fantasy—"

"Sakaki, the china, please." Muraki grabbed one of the napkins off the tray to sop up the spilled coffee.

"Damn the china, Kazutaka!"

That made Muraki pause, if only for a moment. It wasn't like his man to use his first name. But how else was Sakaki to get the urgency of his feelings across, if Muraki would not listen to reason alone?

Yet Muraki already knew what he wanted to say. "I'm well aware you don't approve of my current trajectory."

"Why couldn't you have just left things as they were! Forget fire: You're playing with nukes this time, and it doesn't matter how careful you think you are. Sooner or later you're going to slip, and this project of yours is going to kill you!"

"And you feel that I do not fully appreciate what my death, should it occur, would do to you. Is that it?"

Sakaki silently fumed. To him, Muraki's return from Kyoto was a second chance, nothing short of a miracle, and he was not the type of man to abide seeing either wasted. But he answered with stoic calm: "I promised your grandfather that I would do everything in my power to protect you. I swore it on his grave—"

"And you have done so admirably, for longer than he ever could have hoped. You have watched over me like a shepherd who swears to keep his flock safe from all harm. But there must come a day, Sakaki, when the shepherd yields to the butcher."

The pain on Sakaki's face as he said those words took Muraki back. To the dark, wooden house he used to call home, and the sharp smell of cordite, and his half-brother's blood seeping into his clothes. Only then Sakaki's face had worn the fearful relief of one who has just averted some great disaster. Now he feared that not only was he powerless to stop the next one, but that the boy he had once saved from certain death actually welcomed it.

If Muraki could have disavowed his man of that notion, he would have. It was not that he longed to die, so much as that he had prepared himself for the possibility. He did not fear death so much as he feared leaving work unfinished. But it would not do to return Sakaki's concerns with false assurances. He respected the man too much to lie to him.

Instead, he stood, and put his hand upon Sakaki's shoulder. They had only embraced once in his life, in the days following the funeral when Muraki had found himself suddenly overcome by the loss of his parents, and Sakaki, by some uncanny intuition, had understood just how important it was to Muraki to keep that hidden from the rest of the world. He had been so ashamed then, that he was more frightened about being an orphan than he was saddened by either parent's death; but Sakaki had needed no explanation, no apology, to stand by him. He never had.

So that simple touch spoke volumes that Muraki couldn't with words, though he could try. "You've been more a father to me than any man ever was," he told Sakaki to his eyes. "And that is a debt I can never repay. All I can ask is that you trust me to do what is right, and know that all you have done has been enough. It has been more than enough. Grandfather would not have faulted you a thing. Whatever may happen to me, you have nothing to be sorry for."

"But how can you be sure all this trouble is worth it?" Sakaki hissed, albeit chastened. "How can one man, no matter who or what he is, really be worth all this?"

Muraki smiled. "Trust me. If you love me, Sakaki, that is what you must do. It's all you can do."

* * *

"What I'd really like to know," he said, crossing his arms over his chest, "is how you managed to get yourself free of my circle."

Tsuzuki snorted. "Haven't we already been over this? You know they say the definition of madness—"

"Just because you keep evading my question doesn't mean I expect your answer to change. I expect _an_ answer, and I will not stop asking until you supply me with one."

Tsuzuki only glared at him—though the defiance shining in those eyes as they stared rakishly through his hair managed to only endear Muraki further to him. "You should already know the answer without me telling you. Unless you're just testing me to see if my version of the story matches up. You really expect me to believe you didn't have me under surveillance the entire time I was in your trap? It wouldn't be like you to be so trusting."

"I _did_ have you under surveillance," Muraki didn't mind confirming, "but whatever you did in your final moments under that spell destroyed the camera I had trained on you outright and fried everything else. As though you unleashed some sort of electromagnetic pulse when you broke free."

That information sobered Tsuzuki, who was already shaking his head before Muraki could finish. "I don't remember any of that. I wish I could say I remember what I did, but I don't."

"Don't lie to me—"

"I'm not lying!" Then, after some consideration, "Though I wouldn't tell you how I did it even if I knew. You'd only come up with tougher traps to stick me in, or worse poisons."

Muraki raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I promise. No more traps, no more poisons. You've moved beyond that now."

"But why? I'm still susceptible to them. Enma will put me through worse, if he ever gets his hands on me again. So what's the point of your little exercise if all it proves is that I can get out of _your_ trap?"

Muraki caught the way Tsuzuki watched him as he paced around the room, like a predator sizing up the creature before it, trying to determine how much trouble it would give him if he tried to bring it down. Tsuzuki insisted he didn't feel any different, that nothing had changed, but everything about him had. It was in the way he carried himself, his voice, his eyes—even his aura. And either he just couldn't see it for himself, or all of this insistence on amnesia was a careful ploy to throw Muraki off his guard. Meaning Muraki had to be especially careful what he did next.

And just the thought that Tsuzuki might have turned the tables on him, playing at deception and muddled motives, was enough to quicken Muraki's pulse, and stimulate those reward centers within him that thrilled at the chase, the subtle manipulation. Even if he was the one now being manipulated.

"Is it also true that you don't remember the things you said while you were under the poison's influence?" Muraki asked him.

He thought he caught a hint of a mischievous grin twitch on Tsuzuki's lips, but it disappeared again so quickly he had to admit he may have only imagined it. "According to you," Tsuzuki said, "I was talking to myself."

"Yes. A riveting debate, by the sound of things. Don't worry," Muraki added to the other's side-eye, "I have no interest in holding any private details of your life or afterlife over your head, so long as you give me no cause. But I do hope some sort of consensus was reached."

A breathy chuckle. "You could say that."

There it was again! _So, I didn't imagine it._ That Muraki was glad to see. And just a little unnerved. He admired this side of Tsuzuki, but—to use the analogy again—did feel rather like the prey thrown into that violet-eyed predator's cage.

"I'm not sure how much sense this will make," Tsuzuki said, "but I feel as though, for the first time in a long time—hell," he revised after a moment's thought, "maybe for the first time ever, I know what I really am—I mean _truly_ know it, really _feel_ it to the depths of my soul—and I'm not bothered by it. Well, I don't mean 'I'm not bothered by it' as in 'I've killed off my conscience entirely'; I'm not like _you_."

You wound me, Muraki thought, but thought it best not to interrupt. Not when Tsuzuki was being so frank.

"But I know why Enma chose me," Tsuzuki said with a nod. "I was made to be a shinigami. Like you said, I'm a weapon. Whether I like it or not is irrelevant—killing is what I'm good at. It doesn't do anyone any good if I feel guilty about my purpose. It isn't for me to decide who lives and who dies anyway. Just follow my orders."

After all that Muraki had done, after everything he had put Tsuzuki through to make him see the truth, that was the conclusion he came to? Muraki shook his head. "Spoken like Enma's loyal little lapdog. . . ."

That got the rise he was looking for. Tsuzuki shot forward, and grabbed the front of Muraki's shirt tight with both hands. "What other options do I have? Do you know how hard it is to stay sane, after doing the things I've done?"

"You could always fight—"

"I've been fighting it my entire existence," Tsuzuki said through his teeth. "That's the problem!"

"Then the solution should be obvious. I'm not talking about denying what you are, Tsuzuki. I know all too well how futile that is. I'm suggesting you fight the system that made you this way."

Muraki could only stare into those purple eyes as he watched a succession of reactions pass over them, from disbelief and sacrilegious outrage to a gradual hope, even—dare he think it?—agreement. He lowered his voice to say, with the intimacy of a lover: "Who gave Enma the right to decide who lives and who dies? Why should anyone's fate be decided in advance, and regardless of what deeds they have done? You want someone to blame for what you've become, blame the Judges of the Dead. If you wish to see justice done, start with those who prevent it from ever being meted out."

"Take power over life and death into my own hands, huh?" Tsuzuki scoffed at that. "You want to turn me into another you."

"No. That is, I would prefer we were in agreement, but not if it comes at the cost of your ability to think for yourself. As I've told you countless times, I only want the innocent to be rewarded with life, and the guilty to suffer in equal measure to their sins." When he felt Tsuzuki's grip on him ease, Muraki took hold of Tsuzuki's wrists, and pulled his hands gently away. "Once I thought you desired the same—"

"I do."

"Then why yoke yourself to the service of the very entity that stands in the way of that becoming reality? Don't you feel as though someone else might do the job better?"

Muraki was aware of Tsuzuki's eyes on him as he stepped away to remove his tie, just as he was aware of what blasphemy, to a shinigami, he had suggested with that question. But surely Tsuzuki's silence was proof that he could find no reason to carry on his sorry defense. None that he could prove had merit, in any case.

"Why don't we change the subject?" Muraki said as he turned to face him again, unbuttoning his cuffs. "Do you feel you've recovered enough to spar?"

"Any excuse to get your hands on me, is that it?" Tsuzuki began to say.

But before he could finish, Muraki came at him with a right hook, hoping to see if he might throw Tsuzuki off his guard. He was pleasantly surprised when Tsuzuki ducked beneath it and seized hold of him, trying to throw Muraki over his shoulder.

But Muraki saw what he was doing before he could complete it—he had used the same move on Tsuzuki any number of times during his incarceration here, after all—and was able to land on his feet and twist away. Some witticism about his lesson having been absorbed was on his lips, ready to deliver, but Tsuzuki refused to give him that chance. He pressed onward, jabbing at Muraki, kicking at him, his attacks lacking the proper discipline of the martial arts, perhaps, but more than making up for in accuracy and sheer determination what they lacked in structure.

And certainly not lacking in force. That was the difference Muraki felt most of all, with each block. He hadn't felt so corporeally punished since he was an adolescent, and Sakaki had put him through the same rigors instructing him in self-defense. He had hated it then, resented his guardian for what his spoiled upbringing branded abuse, and for the ugly bruises that bloomed beneath his clothes. Somewhere along the way he had started to take pride in those wounds, however, and feel a morbid sense of satisfaction in the soreness he woke up with, or the tender spots that twinged throughout the day, in doing so reminding Muraki of what he was becoming: stronger. He had learned to see a difference between the bruises that were a sign of his failure to protect himself, and those that were marks of his growth as a student.

Yet somewhere between that time, some twenty years ago, and now, he had dealt plenty of blows with bone-shattering force and forgotten what they felt like to receive. His ulnae and shoulders soon ached from defending himself from Tsuzuki's attacks. It was clear the techniques he was using before Tsuzuki's breakthrough would no longer be sufficient. Not if he wanted to avoid a fracture.

He caught Tsuzuki's ankle, and gave it a sharp twist. Pulled off balance, Tsuzuki hit the floor—but landed lightly and rolled away, out of reach, where he crouched, catching his breath.

"Impressive," Muraki breathed as he pushed sweat-dampened hair out of his eyes. "I see I'll have to give my all if I want to last more than a minute with the new you."

Tsuzuki scoffed, but let the "new you" comment slide. "You mean you were holding back before?"

"I was, actually." Though it sounded almost like an admission of defeat to say so now. An admission of just how mortal Muraki was compared to his opponent. "I wanted to teach you a lesson, not kill you."

"You could have killed me, though. You know it wouldn't have mattered."

"Except that if I had killed you, however temporary your death may have been, it would have only fed into your martyr complex, and that thing has given me quite enough trouble already."

That earned Muraki a saucy laugh. "And here I thought my martyr complex was one of the things you loved most about me. I thought you found it charming."

That last uttered in a breathless grunt as Muraki pushed him against the wall, pinning Tsuzuki's wrists at the level of his eyes. "Charming" was certainly one word for it. More evidence that Muraki was finding all of these changes rather head-spinning. He could tell himself that this was a side of Tsuzuki he had been desperate to see—dreaming of seeing, again, ever since that night in Kyoto when he had awakened something he had only suspected was there. But now that he was confronted by it in a state of lucidity, Muraki wasn't entirely sure how best to react.

"You're not afraid," Tsuzuki murmured while he wriggled enticingly in Muraki's hold, "that I'll martyr _you_ , Muraki?"

If Tsuzuki had reacted to his advances on the _Queen Camellia_ like this, rather than freezing up and playing hard to get, would Muraki have wanted to possess him half as much? Or tenfold?

"I take it as a challenge," Muraki said, matching his tone. "To stay alive to enjoy this." He couldn't help himself. His teeth grazed Tsuzuki's ear, his breath echoing warmly back against his own skin. Tsuzuki chuckled again.

But at the last moment, his laughter turned dark. Sinister. Muraki knew what a risk he took, allowing himself to give in to—as Tsuzuki might have put it—any excuse to get close enough to touch Tsuzuki, to taste him. But he could feel Tsuzuki tensing to attack, emboldened by the advantages their proximity gave him, and made sure he wasn't there when the shinigami chose to make his move.

Finding Muraki suddenly out of his reach, Tsuzuki huffed, and spread his arms. "So, this is what you wanted all along. For me to embrace the side of me who's a murderer."

"No sides," Muraki said, maintaining his gaze. "Human, demon. Murderer, saint. Both. Neither. I don't care. All I wanted was to make you whole. No more repression. No more delusions. I need you as fully _you_ as you were ever designed to be."

That pulled a smirk from Tsuzuki's lips—but it was only temporary. Even now, even though it appeared as though the two halves (if Muraki could justly phrase it as such) of his nature had been fully united, still Tsuzuki struggled to accept what he was.

Or perhaps what he struggled against was the thought that he was anyone's agent but his own. "That's an awfully big risk to take. It might just backfire."

"As I'm well aware." Just as Muraki was aware of the racing of his heart, as he waited for a circling Tsuzuki to make his next move—and of the strain of anticipation, dread and excitement all mixed up in a pleasant churn behind his navel. "But it's always a risk, to bare your innermost self to another soul. To let them see you as truly are, and not just as you _want_ to be seen. All our faults and complications included."

Whatever it was specifically that Muraki said that triggered something deep inside Tsuzuki, he couldn't know. Tsuzuki gritted his teeth, and his eyes flashed with some old, secret hurt. Muraki had to act quickly to deflect the wave of energy that burst from him. He felt the impact of it against his barriers, the sudden change in air pressure in his inner ears. But it was the fireplace mantel that took the full force of the deflected attack, its decorative molding exploding into splinters.

To think, that could have been my ribcage, Muraki thought. Or his skull, for that matter. But he could lament the destruction of his property at some more convenient time. Tsuzuki rushed at him, his head colliding with Muraki's stomach, as though to erase whatever shameful truth about him Muraki may have seen, and the viciousness of it nearly bowled the doctor off his feet.

But he kept his wits about him, landing a blow to Tsuzuki's spine that made the shinigami reel, and gave Muraki just enough of a break to get a more solid grip. He lifted Tsuzuki off the floor, slamming him back into the broken mantelpiece, and saw chunks of it break away streaked with Tsuzuki's blood. Muraki could swear he felt bones pop beneath his grip.

But Tsuzuki's face showed little sign of discomfort. If anything, it only stoked his bloodlust. He grabbed Muraki's wrists, holding them to himself, and wrapped his legs around Muraki's arms. A sharp kick to the jaw had Muraki seeing stars as he stumbled back, his left arm feeling stretched as though it had nearly been pulled from its socket. He ducked Tsuzuki's next blows, hooking him around the neck with his right arm, attempting to turn Tsuzuki around to a position more advantageous to himself.

Tsuzuki had a similar idea, however, and used Muraki's own momentum to throw them both to the floor. Muraki grimaced as he landed with all his and Tsuzuki's weight on his shoulder. If the bone was not bruised, or worse, he would be surprised. He was sure to be sorer than in a very long time in the morning.

If he even made it till morning. They struggled on the hard floor for supremacy over one another, both desperate not to be overpowered; but Muraki did not possess the same advantages as Tsuzuki. He was mortal, he tired, and his attempts to siphon off Tsuzuki's energy were thwarted. He could not get a grip on Tsuzuki long enough to do so, before one arm or the other was wrenched to just about the snapping point, or another hard jab of Tsuzuki's elbow or knee to his ribs stole his breath away.

Muraki could only take so much of it before he was forced to acknowledge he was losing. He knew the symptoms of a torn rotator cuff, a fractured rib; and though Tsuzuki's blood had allowed him to heal with inhuman speed from much worse in the past, he had had one advantage then that Tsuzuki was certain not to allow him now: time.

So when he found himself slammed back onto the floor, Tsuzuki's hands around his throat, he saw the futility in struggling further, and ceased.

If Tsuzuki expected him to fight back, he would just have to be disappointed. Muraki even surprised himself how at peace he was in the moment. But in many ways, this was what he had been preparing himself for since the night of the fire in Kyoto—perhaps, if he were honest, even longer than that. Perhaps from the moment Saki pointed their father's sword at his throat, a part of him had been waiting for the moment of his death, aware that every minute it did not come was time he should never have been granted.

Ever since then Muraki had thought his death would come in the form of a blade. He had almost gone so far as to romanticize it. A slow death by suffocation wouldn't be his first choice, but there were far less pleasant ways to go, and he could not deny there was a certain poetic justice to it, after everything he had done. . . .

"Go on," he muttered. Tsuzuki had left him just enough leeway to get a little air in with each breath. "Do it!"

He saw Tsuzuki grit his teeth, and was sure the man's jaw must be aching behind it. How much self-restraint did it take, not to snap Muraki's neck and be done with him? "You actually _want_ to die?"

The hands around his throat twisted and forced Muraki's head back. But Muraki could still keep Tsuzuki in his sights. If this was to be the end, he was going to make sure his killer's face was the image he took with him to his judgment. Enma should at least know who deserved the credit.

"I thought you'd at least plead for your life," Tsuzuki hissed. "Like your victims pled for theirs."

If Muraki had had the breath in him, he might have laughed. "You don't know my victims . . . as you call them . . . as well as you think you do. . . ."

If he could only show Tsuzuki—if he could just take him back to that cherry grove under the eclipse, and hear his precious boy plead to be allowed to die, promise anything to stop the pain, to bury the humiliation.

And perhaps reading his thoughts, or at least their direction, Tsuzuki tightened his hold.

But only momentarily. "No. A quick death would be too merciful for you," Tsuzuki decided. His fingers may have loosened, but they could still end Muraki's life at any moment. The pressure of them was still painful, making every breath a struggle, every inhalation burn.

"It's . . . your right . . ."

"And it's my right to see you suffer, too," said Tsuzuki.

Through the black spots dancing along Muraki's vision, Tsuzuki never looked more like an avenging angel than at that moment, straddling Muraki's waist. Aloof, otherworldly—wounded but still radiant with his power. He even had a halo—though _that_ might have been the hypoxia.

Either way, he was magnificent. The pinnacle of what he was meant to be. Longing for him surged within Muraki.

And when Tsuzuki shifted his weight, just how Muraki was suffering could no longer escape his notice. The corner of Tsuzuki's lips pulled up in a sadistic grin. "God," he chuckled, "even when I have your life literally in my hands, you just can't help yourself, can you? You still seem to think you can have me."

This time the shift was not so incidental. Tsuzuki moved his hips in achingly slow waves, rubbing himself on Muraki's erection; and under the circumstances, Muraki could not find the will to resist his body's reaction. If he was going to die at Tsuzuki's hands, he might as well die getting what he had wanted for so long. Even if Tsuzuki's only motive in giving it was to embarrass Muraki at the end—to drum in just a little deeper who was in control and who had lost it.

"This is what you really want, isn't it?" Tsuzuki taunted as he teased. "Forget all that shit about fulfilling my destiny, or turning me against Enma. This is all it's ever come down to for you. I don't know whether that's more flattering, or pathetic."

Muraki need not have answered for Tsuzuki to know the truth, even had he been able. His groan caught beneath the pressure of Tsuzuki's hands, but surely Tsuzuki felt it. Muraki grabbed his wrists and held those hands in place, just as he held his stare. He needed Tsuzuki to know: This was _exactly_ where Muraki wanted him. He could feel every dip and curve of Tsuzuki through his trousers. The heat of him, that Muraki had long dreamed of burying himself in. The intoxicating pressure of Tsuzuki's thighs squeezing his waist—just as his hands squeezed Muraki's throat. There was something sensual even in this act of slow destruction, something rousingly primal. And more intimate than words could do justice: this sharing in the act of extinguishing a life, even if it was his own.

The incestuousness of it struck Muraki then in a way it had only in an abstract, intellectual sense before—not as anything deserving of shame or condemnation, but like the pure selfishness of a serpent eating its own tail. Like a line coming full circle, spiraling in on itself into a tight, warm singularity. A wheel of fate, finding justification only in the hour of its fulfillment.

Muraki saw the moment the same realization dawned on Tsuzuki: that what Tsuzuki swore he would never do, he had. And he didn't back away. He did not let up his agonizingly drawn-out assault. He studied Muraki with cold fascination, even the sadistic grin fading from his lips. "But you are beautiful," he murmured, tossing Muraki's words back at him without any sense of irony, "when you're suffering."

Muraki had to wonder if he had been deprived of so much oxygen that he was hallucinating when Tsuzuki bent over him, and covered Muraki's mouth with his own. One way or the other, it seemed, Tsuzuki was determined to cut off his air; but Muraki would take this victory with him to the grave.

The pleasure building behind his navel spilled over, and Muraki found himself tripping into orgasm. He, who prided himself on his restraint, his patience, his ability to set himself above base desires. He ought to have been ashamed at such a loss of self-control, but in the cruel perfection of the moment, he couldn't bring himself to be.

Even when Tsuzuki pulled away from him, laughing. Christ, how he sounded like Saki in that moment. "Jesus, Muraki, if I knew that was all it would take . . ."

Then, just like that, he released his hold on Muraki and got up.

Leaving Muraki to hoist himself back into a sitting position, and rub in vain at his bruised throat while his vision cleared of flashes and dark spots. "Why didn't you finish me off?"

"I think I just did," Tsuzuki grinned, glancing down at Muraki's lap. Then he sobered. "But if you mean why didn't I kill you, I changed my mind. For now, anyway. That wasn't how I wanted to end it. Besides, you still haven't told me how to get out of this place."

"What makes you think I will?"

"Because you promised you would let me go. When you were done with me."

"And you think I'm done with you?"

To that, Tsuzuki had no response but an impudent glare.

Then it was Muraki's turn to grin. "Maybe finding your own way out of here is your next test, Tsuzuki. Maybe that's always been the test. Did that ever occur to you?"

He hated the way the words came out. Gravelly, like a scratched record. Like the first hintings of old age sneaking up on him. Muraki had always believed he wouldn't live long enough to see them.

"Then I guess I have no choice but to accept the challenge," Tsuzuki shrugged. "In any case, I think I've proved myself enough for one day. We'd better stop here or there might not be anything left of you to teach me my next lesson."

He picked Muraki's jacket up off the chair beside the door before he left, and tossed it back toward the doctor as if it were refuse. "Clean yourself up, Muraki. You're embarrassing yourself."

* * *

This was a risk Muraki had never allowed himself since beginning this venture. Sharing Tsuzuki's cage for a supper or conversation or even a fight was one thing, but to bathe in the same apartment, to make himself so vulnerable, and to do so without a clear exit strategy—surely that was inviting trouble.

And tempting death. Sakaki's warning had not been necessary: Muraki had known long ago just what he was stepping into. Yet he had always been confident in the power of Tsuzuki's own guilt to stay his hand, and the shinigami's uncertainty that killing Muraki was the right choice. Tsuzuki's compassion had always been his undoing in the past, and Muraki's salvation. Only now that he found himself with the same Tsuzuki who stabbed him in Kyoto did Muraki begin to doubt that Tsuzuki could continue to act with the same restraint he'd shown this afternoon.

Contrary though it should have been, knowing what a razor's edge Muraki walked only excited him more. Being aware that at any moment, while he relaxed there in the claw-foot tub soothing his wounds, clad only in water and steam, even his glasses set aside, Tsuzuki might come stealing into the room, armed with a knife, like Clytemnestra come to slay Agamemnon. Or perhaps with only his hands; Tsuzuki needed nothing more.

Surely, Muraki acknowledged not for the first time, there was something wrong with the wiring of his brain. In particular the self-preservation instinct. Just the thought of his own impending assassination attempt was terribly arousing. To add fuel to the flame, the weather had taken a turn for the worse, dropping the curtain of night early on the day's performance. Even through the insulated walls of the mansion, Muraki could hear the rumble of thunder and the pummeling of the heavy raindrops of a summer storm, as though the elements were echoing the tension within these walls. Or, as if God himself were setting the scene of his demise. Beneath the surface of the bath water he still ached recalling the passion of his last encounter with Tsuzuki, but he refrained from any attempt to relieve it. It was better to burn than to be quenched of that fire.

Another muffled boom of thunder. But this one must have been much stronger, or closer. The lights over the sink winked out, plunging the bathroom into darkness.

And sending Muraki's heart hammering, as now would have been the perfect opportunity for an ambush, were he in Tsuzuki's shoes.

The darkness, however, was only a minor inconvenience. Though his right eye had been giving him trouble ever since the night at Ukyou's house—a detail Muraki had thought it best not to mention to Sakaki, and certainly not to Tsuzuki—there was still enough of a spectral light penetrating the window glass for it to see by.

And to show Muraki that he was still all alone in the room. Very well. If Tsuzuki would not come to him . . .

Muraki donned a yukata and stepped out into the hall to investigate. There too, darkness prevailed. The mansion's generator should have kicked on within seconds after losing power; but the house's wiring was old, and it was certainly within reason to assume that while Sakaki was enjoying a well-lit supper downstairs, power to the upstairs apartment had been completely cut off.

But Tsuzuki appeared to have made do just fine on his own. He had found candles, and—though Muraki was certain he had left no matches lying around—had been capable of generating enough of a spark to light them.

Following the trail of light left him, Muraki found his man easily enough. Tsuzuki was already in bed, sitting on top of the covers in his clothes and facing a candle on the side table. Passing his hand repeatedly over the flame and watching with mild fascination as it flickered, back and forth, around his unmarked flesh.

It seemed only polite to ask, "You're still awake?"

Tsuzuki did not answer.

That was, not until Muraki had taken the liberty of seating himself on the mattress. Even feeling it dip beside him, Tsuzuki made no comment about his being there, only observed, as if interrupting some reverie: "I was just thinking about this place, seeing if I can't work out some concrete details about my surroundings."

"And have you?"

"I was able to tell from the electricity going out that there's a storm on outside. And if there are storms and electricity, we're almost certainly on Earth, in the Living World. I still can't be sure what part, though. Japan gets bad storms around this time of year, but then so do a lot of other countries. Of course, knowing you, we could be on a rock out in the middle of the ocean somewhere."

Muraki smiled wryly to himself. "Such fine deduction skills . . . Are you sure you weren't a detective in life, Tsuzuki?"

If Tsuzuki caught his sarcasm, however, he didn't let it bother him. "I probably shouldn't be sharing my suspicions with you, though, should I," he said, glancing briefly over his shoulder at Muraki. Yet he did not get up, did not tell Muraki to leave him. "There's no telling what you might do to throw me off the trail if you think I'm getting close to figuring this all out. What new tortures you might dream up to keep me here a little longer. . . ."

As if to prove some private point, he held his hand directly above the candle's flame, just close and long enough for the skin of his palm to start to singe. Muraki could smell the moment it began to burn. He caught a shadow of Tsuzuki's grimace, but the shinigami kept silent; and the scorch mark disappeared within seconds of being removed from the cause.

"That night in Kumamoto was a lot like this one, wasn't it? When you called me to that chapel and showed me just how responsible I was for all your sins. . . ."

And there it was again, Muraki thought. That subtle edge to Tsuzuki's words, trying to pry something out of Muraki. But Tsuzuki was playing this game with a grand master. "If this is you hoping to trick me into inadvertently revealing some clue, I'm sorry to disappoint," Muraki said, shifting himself closer. Unable to resist the temptation any longer, he pressed his lips to Tsuzuki's shoulder. On the surface, a chaste kiss, but he let its silent promises linger. "Well, to be honest, I'm not sorry. We're finally making significant headway. Can you blame me if I'm not ready for this to end?"

Whether it was something Muraki said, or the press of his mouth, Tsuzuki shivered. "I used to be so sure I hated being touched by you."

Emboldened by the confession, Muraki dragged his lips higher, to the base of Tsuzuki's throat, relishing the taste of his bare skin, as if Tsuzuki were a rare vintage he had waited many long years to enjoy again. "When in fact what you hated," Muraki purred, filling in what the other left unspoken, "was that you loved it. You need my touch. Your soul cries out for it. Just as mine longs to provide it for you. What further proof do you need that we were destined to be together?"

Tsuzuki did not confirm his guess, but nor did he refute it. He was still as ever under Muraki's ministrations, but he did not pull away or freeze up under them as he once had. In fact, his lack of response seemed to welcome them, seemed to draw Muraki in. Like a fish on a line.

If he was that fish, nipping at the bait, Muraki didn't mind. He breathed deep of the scent of Tsuzuki, losing himself to it. He clutched Tsuzuki's arm tight in his grip, but did not need to. The man was going nowhere. Muraki's teeth were at his ear, and Tsuzuki laughed. He laughed. Just an amused little puff of breath, but it felt like a huge breakthrough. "I just realized how much you remind me of someone."

Not what Muraki wanted to hear at that moment, not at all. And he told Tsuzuki so, through gritted teeth. "'For I am a jealous god, and will tolerate no other gods before me.' I'm beginning to think you only mention others when we're together to get a rise out of me, Tsuzuki. What do I have to do before you will think of no one else but me?" And he moved his hand lower, running it possessively over Tsuzuki's thigh.

But before he could go any further, Tsuzuki spun around. His fingers combed through Muraki's hair, and pulled Muraki to him for a proper kiss. With the other hand, he guided Muraki's where he wanted it: to the heat between his legs.

Not one to question a good thing, Muraki responded with gusto, and felt his efforts redeemed by the little moan that escaped Tsuzuki at his touch. Tsuzuki leaned further into the kiss, kneading Muraki's lips with a hunger that was entirely eager and new, while the flesh hardened beneath Muraki's slow, skilled strokes. Tsuzuki's hand curved around the back of Muraki's neck, the pressure of his fingertips against the fresh bruises dragging a growl of masochistic pleasure from deep in Muraki's throat.

But Muraki should have been prepared for duplicity. He should have known, after their last bout, that Tsuzuki's sudden receptiveness to him would not have come without some ulterior motive. He allowed himself to be complacent in what he perceived as his triumph, and, consequently, was taken off his guard when Tsuzuki pushed him down onto the mattress with alarming speed and force.

He pinned Muraki down on his stomach with one arm behind his back, one hand pressing the side of the doctor's face into the bed, just as Muraki had once done to subdue him. Muraki knew in an instant that any struggle on his part would be futile. It might even result in his arm being dislocated. However, with Tsuzuki's erection pressed snug against the curve of his ass, fighting this was the last thing Muraki intended to do.

"You want to be the only one I think of, Muraki?" Tsuzuki growled against his ear as he tugged at Muraki's robe, then his own fly. "This is all for you then. I am your god now, and you stand judged. Think of this as just the beginning of what you deserve."

Though it was surely not the reaction Tsuzuki was going for, Muraki's heart was racing like mad within him, not with fear of what Tsuzuki planned to do, but with anticipation. Tsuzuki pushed into him with no concern for Muraki's comfort, burying himself as far as he was able. Muraki bit back a cry at the shock of it, stifling it in the quilt beneath him.

Yet, despite the searing ache, and the painful pulling in his shoulder, "If your intent is to hurt me," he told Tsuzuki between ragged breaths, "you're going to have to do much better than this." Tsuzuki could certainly try, though. He seemed to take those words as a challenge, thrusting sadistically into Muraki, twisting his fingers in the doctor's hair and wrenching back. Nevertheless, "There's nothing you can do to me that I haven't already dreamt of a thousand times."

What shameful fantasies he had entertained as a young man, when he was alone in the dark, and the old sepia photograph of Tsuzuki would surface in his mind like a song on a record set to repeat. Shameful to who he had been then, but every encounter with Tsuzuki had only served to normalize his desires. To leave him craving more, and greater highs, with every repetition. What did it matter if he had always thought of their positions being reversed? The Tsuzuki he had always met before was a passive creature; Muraki could hardly have expected him to be capable of such intentional feats of cruelty.

But novelty was exhilarating, and in the days since Tsuzuki had been broken—or perhaps it was fairer to say "mended"—

If Tsuzuki thought he would humiliate Muraki this way, punish him, rape him into feeling guilty for everything he had done in the pursuit of this goal, he was sorely deluded. One might as well give sweets to a naughty child and expect it to learn its lesson.

"All I ever desired was for you and I to be one." The discomfort was still there, but blending into the greater milieu of sensation. "To know one another— _nn_ . . ." The thick heat of Tsuzuki filling him, sliding alongside his prostate, trying its damnedest to chase any other coherent thought from Muraki's mind. "And be known . . ." He cursed the friction of the bedclothes beneath him. He had given so much for this moment, he wanted to make this pleasure, and even the pain that accompanied it, last. "As wholly . . . and deeply . . . as possible."

Tsuzuki swore beneath his breath. It seemed to take some of the viciousness out of his thrusts, knowing that they were welcomed. But his desire, and his determination, were not quelled one bit. Muraki felt his rhythm falter, an indication that Tsuzuki was losing himself to his own pleasure—before he attempted to reassert control, with a low growl. Tears sprang to Muraki's good eye as Tsuzuki shifted to a more brutal angle, wrenching his arm further.

But it was the heat building between them that occupied Muraki's attention, the pleasure radiating from his core and filling his whole being with the promise of long-awaited fulfillment. He felt himself tumbling headlong toward the edge, and knew that if he begged Tsuzuki to slow, he would only do the opposite. So Muraki didn't try. Just allowed himself to be carried off into wave after pulsating wave of satisfaction.

And still Tsuzuki kept on at his unrelenting pace. It was as though in surrendering to his climax, Muraki had escaped the moral he was supposed to learn. The longer it went on, the more the blissful heaviness of completion that Muraki so wanted to make last would give way to the raw friction of flesh on tired flesh. There were other ways they could finish this, and maybe they wouldn't satisfy Tsuzuki's lust for justice, but they would satisfy him. "Tsuzuki," Muraki started, but his overture fell on deaf ears. Or stubborn ears. Tsuzuki bucked harder against him, as if he might still salvage this act of revenge by sheer force.

So Muraki tried a different tactic. " _Tsuzuki_ ," he murmured in a lower register, " _listen to me._ Concentrate on the sound of my voice. Concentrate on the sound of my breathing," he whispered beneath his own, matching his words to Tsuzuki's thrusts, to his grunts, to Muraki's own pulse hammering in his crushed ear. "The beat of my heart, falling in time with yours . . . syncopating . . . synchronizing . . . my body becoming your body. . . ."

It mattered little if it all amounted to sentimental nonsense. Muraki concentrated his efforts on the cadence of the words themselves, and their individual sounds: the moistened pop or languid slither of certain consonants, the cloying, breathy moan in certain diphthongs, just barely heard, but their guilty suggestions absorbed in the subconscious to the point of resonance. Letting them fill up the space around them, like a mantra, a spell—like a magic circle spinning round and taking hold over its victim, until Muraki was sure Tsuzuki was setting his pace to the steady waltz of his words. He could feel the tension between them uncoil. Tsuzuki's energy flowing to him again, invigorating him, like a post-coital hit of nicotine. Tsuzuki's hold loosened, the hand pressing Muraki's face into the sheets moving to the mattress beside him.

And when Muraki was certain he had Tsuzuki in the thrall of his voice, just as he had hypnotized Maria and Tsubaki and dozens more before, he bid him "That's enough now, Tsuzuki. Let go. Don't fight your desire: Surrender to it. Let yourself go—"

Tsuzuki's thighs seized against the backs of his as he emptied himself into Muraki, a sob of blessed release falling from his lips. No longer some wrathful, avenging god, just a worn-out creature of weak flesh and base needs, he managed to extricate himself from his hold, trembling, and collapse back onto the bed.

Slowly, mindful of his injuries that had been aggravated, Muraki pushed himself up. He straightened his robe, rubbed feeling back into his mistreated arm. And examined his patient.

Tsuzuki was breathing heavily, staring at the ceiling, pupils dilated. But something else in his gaze had changed. As if he were seeing not the ceiling but something far away, something that wasn't there. Not unlike wherever he had gone to in his mind in Kyoto, only Muraki did not have to inflict any pain this time to send him there.

Confident he had his subject where he wanted him, Muraki began in the same low, even tone, "Tsuzuki?"

"Mm?" came the noncommittal response.

"You said I reminded you of someone." Muraki couldn't help it. Even after what they had just shared, he didn't let go of his jealousy easily. "Tell me."

Tsuzuki's throat bobbed, and he did not answer immediately. For a moment, Muraki feared he would have to abandon this part of the plan. But when Tsuzuki said, as though it were being dragged from him, "Count," his hope was renewed.

"Count?" Muraki echoed. He wasn't aware of anyone by that title. But at least Tsuzuki hadn't answered with the boy. Or that vexing secretary.

"Of the Castle of Candles. It just struck me all of a sudden, when the lights went out. The Western décor of this place, the obsession with matters of life and death . . . Your obsession with _me_. . . ."

"The Castle of Candles?" Muraki prompted. He wasn't sure he had heard Tsuzuki mention it before.

"Where the lifespans of the living are monitored. I shouldn't be talking to you about this," Tsuzuki said, meeting Muraki's gaze. But whatever misgiving he may have had instilled in him under Enma's command caved under the right, subtle suggestion to continue. "But I suppose you're responsible for a lot of them going out before their wicks run down. We've been alerted to plenty of your activities by watching those lives blow out."

So, that was how it worked. This was rather unexpectedly titillating. Muraki had long imagined some place like what Tsuzuki described, based on the testimony of less savory characters. "You've seen evidence of my handiwork personally? In this Castle of yours?"

"No. Shinigami aren't allowed access to something so delicate. We get our information from the—secondhand," Tsuzuki caught himself, tensing. (From this otherwise unnamed Count, Muraki guessed. _The one who for some reason reminds you of me._ ) "Does that bother you?" Tsuzuki asked. "Knowing that while you've been watching us, we've been watching you?"

Muraki allowed himself a small smile. "Sometimes it's more exciting to be the knowing object of a voyeur's attentions, rather than the observer."

"Better to be the hunted than the hunter?"

Now, why had he phrased it that way? "In some ways," the doctor played along, aware that Tsuzuki's words might constitute a trap. "I suppose I'd be disappointed if you weren't watching, after all the trouble I've gone through to get your attention."

Muraki was content to play the part of the observer for the moment. Stretched out beneath him, eyes heavy and dark and skin glistening from his exertions, innocent in his debauchery and debauched in his innocence, this was the Tsuzuki Muraki had always fantasized he would find himself with. Only more perfect, for being real and solid beside him and entirely at his mercy. Incapable of pulling away from Muraki's touch, let alone from his voice.

But he was fading fast. Muraki could see his eyes start to swim. In light of the ferocity of their lovemaking (if that was indeed the right word for it), perhaps he should not have been quite so greedy in satisfying his own demands. He only needed Tsuzuki pliant, not senseless. He took Tsuzuki's chin in his hand, and pulled him back.

"Tsuzuki, I know right now your mind is spinning and telling you it wants to sleep, but this is important. I need you to listen very carefully to what I'm about to tell you. Do you think you can do that?"

From Tsuzuki, no response. Not that any was necessary. He was receptive; of that much Muraki was certain. That was all that mattered for his purposes.

"Are you familiar with the Kiseki?"

"The book that records the expected dead," Tsuzuki mumbled to the ceiling. "Of course I'm familiar with it. Every shinigami is. I didn't pay _that_ little attention at my job."

The sarcasm was cute, but Muraki didn't have the patience for it just at the moment. "Yes, but are you _familiar_ with it? Have you seen it with your own eyes?"

"No. We're not supposed to get that close to it, as shinigami. It's . . ."

"Classified?" Muraki supplied.

"Delicate," Tsuzuki settled for. He stretched like a cat, and Muraki couldn't help his gaze drifting lower, following the dimple of his navel down to his spent cock. . . . God, but he wanted seconds already. "It's a delicate matter. Like—"

"Like the candles in the Castle. Yes, I think I'm beginning to understand." And what had he been expecting, really? That security was so lax in the Land of the Dead that a shinigami bureaucrat from what Muraki had been given to understand was a low-level department would be given free access to those devices that controlled the very commodity their world relied upon?

If his scheme was so far-fetched, however, maybe there was no harm in revealing it. Perhaps to a kindred spirit, if he had not misjudged Tsuzuki too wildly. "I'd like your help in something, Tsuzuki."

"Mm?" came the tired response from under one crooked arm.

"I would like you, when you return to Meifu, to retrieve the Kiseki. For me."

"The Kiseki?" Tsuzuki peeked out from under his arm at Muraki; and for a moment the doctor worried that perhaps he hadn't lulled Tsuzuki into as thorough a hypnotic state he had thought before confessing his motives. "What could you possibly want . . .? No. Mm-mm," Tsuzuki shook his head, "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Never mind the part where you want me to _steal_ from Enma. Even if that _could_ be done, and I somehow succeeded with my immortal soul intact, you can't have the book. Someone like you shouldn't have that kind of power."

The power to erase life or return it with the stroke of a pen? Didn't he know Muraki well enough by now to understand he was nearly halfway there by his own ingenuity?

Muraki leaned over him, and settled himself between Tsuzuki's legs. They were already parted; it wasn't much of an intrusion to nudge them a little wider. Even drained, hypersensitive to any touch, Tsuzuki shivered beneath him and stifled a small groan, the hedonist within at war with that part of him still determined not to respond to any of Muraki's overtures, and the former winning fast.

"And what about Enma? I quite agree with you, Tsuzuki, that I shouldn't have the power. But the better question is, should anyone? Even a so-called god?"

It seemed Tsuzuki had no ready answer to that. Or, judging by the furrow in his brow, the bit lip, perhaps it was the press of Muraki beneath his balls. Which was just as well. A distracted mind meant less competition for Muraki's logic.

"You said that, more than anything, you wanted justice, Tsuzuki. Yet how can such a thing ever exist so long as the time and manner of an individual's death is decided well in advance? Those who seek to change their fates are deemed sinners. Or, they are sent you for their troubles. A failsafe designed into the system to ensure no one, no matter how worthy of it, escapes the plots of the Judges of the Dead. Surely if you believe in fairness, in compassion, you can agree that that qualifies as neither one."

Muraki was well aware they were going in circles with this argument, and Tsuzuki still resisted it, like a stubborn child determined not to let one bite of some hated dish pass its lips. It seemed with each repetition, however, Muraki wore down his defenses, even if it was only by chips instead of chunks. He _was_ wearing them down; that was all that mattered.

"You need not make a decision right now. Merely . . . think about my proposal. And should you decide it has merit, I believe there is something that may help you to accomplish it."

While Tsuzuki lay blinking at him, Muraki lowered his lips to his ear, so that his conspiratorial whispers might better be heard. Not that he needed to whisper here, with only the muffled storm for competition.

"You see, the more I study the legends surrounding the various Lords of the Dead, the more a common theme seems to emerge. Each of them is rumored to have been given some item, some article of invisibility, to allow them to better move throughout the Living World undetected. Hades had his cap of invisibility, others possessed a robe or a cloak . . . or a mask. . . ."

That got the reaction he desired. Tsuzuki backed his head away and stared at Muraki, eyes wide with surprise. "Does that ring a bell for you, Tsuzuki?"

"How could you . . ."

"How did I know?" Muraki smiled. Tsuzuki needn't know he'd just been cold-read. "Irrelevant. You know to what I refer, and that's all I care about. Should you find it difficult to complete your mission, take the mask, and with it, with that little piece of his power in your possession, even Enma will have trouble standing between you and the Kiseki. And then, when you have the book . . ."

He brushed his lips over Tsuzuki's cheek, back to his ear, relishing the little arch in Tsuzuki's spine, the stirring against Muraki's belly. Even as he tried half-heartedly to push Muraki away.

"Come find me again.

"Now, get some sleep. I can see that you need it. Think long and hard about what I've said. When you wake, you will not remember that we had this conversation. You will not remember that it was I who suggested this plot. But you will remember what I said. It will be waiting there, in the back of your mind, as though you came up with it all on your own."


	22. Stay human

The Floating Desert was aptly named, and not only for the magnificent pallisades and pillars of eroded sandstone that seemed to hover above the drifting sand at their bases, or on the waves of a heat mirage in the distance. As their party neared their destination, they saw sights that defied the laws of physics, at least such as they were in the Real World: great monoliths that hovered in the air, somehow fixed and immobile while the wind whistled around them, sheering off little falls of dust. Some of these floating rocks had been painted long ago with mantras and swastikas that were wearing away, some strung with tattered flags. Some were encircled with nets made of a shimmering silk cords, tied into what looked like delicate bridges and ladders, these decidedly more recent. Of the beings that used them, however, they saw no sign.

They saw no sign of any life whatsoever, but Hisoka felt that they were not as alone as things seemed. Each cliff that rose around them, dotted with dark cave mouths, seemed to possess eyes, a face, a personality with which to watch them as they passed. That went doubly for the occasional colossus of a saint or demon carved into the side of the rock.

Still, Hisoka was sure that they _were_ being watched. Not by the rocks, but by something, someone. Kurikara would not allow himself to be surprised by some invading army, let alone allow some impetuous human soul who thought he was worthy of winning the great dragon to come so close to his person unnoticed.

"Just remember what we discussed last night," Rikugou told him as he walked beside Hisoka, who in turn was mounted on Senrima's back.

Though it might technically have been this morning that their conversation took place. They had all gotten such little sleep since Hisoka's communion with Yatonokami, and subsequent telling of it.

"You don't think it's too much to risk?" Hisoka said. Though it had been his idea at the start, he couldn't help having second thoughts.

"Risk?" Rikugou smiled to himself. "The most daring plans always entail a great deal of risk, but yield the biggest rewards. This is our best option if we wish to succeed in all of our endeavors. I knew that the moment you suggested it to me. It fit so perfectly I was sure it must be fate. So, yes, it is dangerous, but we must go ahead with it."

It was this talk of fate, as well as that mysterious little smile, that made Hisoka ask "Is there something you're not telling me, Rikugou?"

The Astrologer turned to him, blinking innocently behind his glasses. "How do you mean?"

"You see something that has to do with this plan, don't you? Something about the future?"

"I see all possibilities, it is my nature," Rikugou said, though his answer in no way felt like it cleared up anything for Hisoka. "You mustn't let your shame or fear of pain hold you back. We have come too far for that. You will just have to trust that everything that must happen will."

A retort that that wasn't actually helpful—in fact it was rather the opposite—was on the tip of Hisoka's tongue; but a warning cry, like the _woof_ of a lion, echoed through the wadi.

K perked up her ears and went still in Hisoka's lap, her wide eyes scanning the cliffs for the source of the sound. That was Hisoka's cue to jump down from Senrima's back, for the horse shiki to transform, and for all four to prepare themselves for an ambush.

Instead, a lone dark figure, with a wild mane of black hair, twisting horns, and carrying a heavy staff, appeared on a shelf of rock up above them. And laughed. "So, the rumors are true. Kurosaki, the Destroyer of Worlds, has returned, and the King of Birds has finally seen the light and turned against his decrepit master. The end _must_ be nigh."

"Fire-eyed Kokushungei," Rikugou purred, glaring up at her. "No sooner are you released from your servitude than you go scurrying back to Kurikara on hand and knee. So I guess it's true what they say, about history repeating itself. Millennia may pass, but you still haven't learned your lesson."

Shungei leapt down from her perch, landing with the grace of a cat. Her striped black-on-black skin seemed to glow with an inner fire, a trait Hisoka would swear was new since she had been freed from Terazuma, and when she grinned, her fangs gleamed like a wild thing's. On her tunic, the cloth of which shone like electrum, a dragon was rampant in blood- and fire-red.

"Show's what you know," she said to Rikugou. "Lord Kurikara does not ask his subjects to humble themselves before him, unlike some other dragons I could name. He does not _demand_ our love and loyalty out of fear of retaliation. He commands them because they are freely given—because he has _earned_ them by the pure majesty and might of his person."

Rikugou folded his arms. "Spoken like a true zealot."

Which earned him a scoff from the Black Lion. She pointed her iron staff at him. "Which of us is the zealot, Rikugou? The one who is free to make up her own mind and choose her own master? Or the one who would sacrifice all, even throw away his own life, for some human child he believes in no matter what the human has done—or _failed_ to do?"

That last bit was aimed at Hisoka like an arrow; and when her glare turned to him, Hisoka felt like it had truly sunk home. His grip tightened on the bow slung across his shoulder instinctively. But he told himself, She's trying to rile me, to get a reaction. I can't give her the satisfaction.

"Terazuma misses you," he said instead. The words just seemed to pour from him. Though he wasn't sure Terazuma would have appreciated Hisoka's share, it was the truth that Shungei needed to hear. "He wants to know why you left him."

"Why _I_ left _him_?"

Shungei's eyes flared like a bonfire given new fuel—but she tamped down her hurt and sense of betrayal before Hisoka could get more than a psychic whiff of it. _She doesn't know what happened any better than Terazuma does. She couldn't have broken from him intentionally._

 _Wait. Did_ I _do this to her? When I lost control of Rikugou's attack?_

But Shungei said, even though Hisoka knew it was a lie, "He was weak. He never did want me. But since he was stuck with me, he thought he had a right to put me through hell, without any thought for my feelings. Without any _respect_ for my power! So I decided I had had enough. I'm through with humans."

Senrima clearly did not know what Hisoka did, that Shungei's posturing was in self-defense. She snorted, and her ears burned red with her anger. "You blasphemous, selfish bitch—you're a disgrace to our kind! Betraying your master because he asked of you what you ought to have been glad to give! You ought to be stripped of your powers for such an offense. You are not worthy to be called a guardian—"

" _Enough!_ " Rikugou did not need to pause time: His voice echoed like a shot off the surrounding cliffs.

And the two women, who had been poised to settle their dispute with violence, calmed themselves. Somewhat.

"We require an audience with Kurikara," he told them, and ignored Shungei's growled, "You will not even show him the proper deference—"

"It is of tantamount importance that we speak with him," Rikugou spoke over her, his voice calm but commandingly loud. "The future of our world hangs in the balance."

Shungei crossed her arms at that. "You wish to broker a peace, too?"

 _Too?_ That was a telling word, in Hisoka's opinion. But he didn't get a chance to ask why she had used it, and Rikugou did not see it as an issue worth pressing.

"I wish to ensure Gensoukai survives the current era," the Astrologer said instead. "In that, I'm sure your king and myself are in agreement, no matter what becomes of this war of ideology and old hurts. You will take us to him now, Kokushungei, or suffer the consequences of our silence later. And that is not a threat. It is an observation. The choice is yours. But you will not get a second chance to make it."

Shungei vacillated for a moment between her pride and reason, and the suspicion she still harbored for Hisoka and his motives. To speak nothing of her clear dislike for Senrima.

But she relented with a muttered "Behave yourselves" that seemed meant for each of them equally, K included, and they were on their way again.

Kurikara's court was abuzz with nervous mutterings when Hisoka's party was escorted in. Whether it was due to his reputation in this world preceding him, or the presence of two powerful shiki of the first order by his side, he couldn't be entirely sure; but Hisoka was left with an overwhelming feeling that he might have found a warmer reception in Sohryuu's court than this one.

They were led up a staircase cut into the rock, and emerged in a large semi-natural cavern that felt like an auditorium, its back open to the dry desert winds and the hazy sky. Despite that Kurikara was calling himself a king, there was almost nothing to indicate it was a place of royalty. Weapons of war lined the walls, covering up chipped and eroded murals, and even hung braced from the ceiling, within easy reach of Gensoukai's taller or winged denizens. Fires burned in tripods and braziers, giving the cavern the glow and smoky air of a forge. Or a hell.

The locals didn't help to dispel that impression much, either. Giant, hairy spiders with human faces and chimeric creatures even more intimidating than the living stone statues Hisoka had faced in Rikugou's fortress milled about the edges of the hall. He picked out a few of Kurikara's other generals by the tunics they wore, almost identical to Shungei's. There was even a congregation of tengu, trying to fade into the background when Rikugou turned his glare their way; and if they hadn't been hiding behind their avian faces, Hisoka wondered if he might have recognized a few of them from his first visit to Gensoukai, as those vocal denizens of Mount Kurama who had wanted to ally themselves with the powerful Dragon King even then.

But Hisoka had to admit, it was seeing Kijin standing at the foot of the throne that threw him for a loop. "What are you doing here?" Hisoka asked him, hurrying to his side, heedless of court etiquette.

"Making sure nothing stands between you and your destiny," Kijin said in a tone meant for him and him alone.

But there was at least one other who overheard. "Destiny." Kurikara scoffed at the word. "I see you still suffer under the delusion that you can win me, Kurosaki. Even after failing twice, you truly believe the third time will be the charm?"

"I only failed once," Hisoka shot back, raising his eyes to the throne. "We never got to finish our rematch."

Standing upon the raised dais at the foot of the throne, this Kurikara looked every bit the great king and general who could command such an army of powerful creatures as those that stood around them—in contrast to the one Hisoka had foolishly called "kid" upon first meeting him. Over his shining black armor, a robe intricately embroidered in fiery reds and oranges and golds draped to pool on the floor, and a crown that resembled knives sat upon his head, woven into intricate knots of his hair. To speak nothing of his aura: He may have cut a deceptively small and young figure in his human form, and been dwarfed by the immense throne at his back, but Kurikara radiated immense power.

On either side of his throne hovered a massive sword, and Hisoka knew from personal experience just how alive and autonomous, and deadly, they were. How much greater the power of the one who had forged them? Not for the first time did he wish he could go back to that first meeting, and, with cooler head, say the right words, words which might have set him and Kurikara off on the right foot. If he had, maybe this conflict that embroiled the Imaginary World now could have been avoided entirely.

But Hisoka could not go back, and he could not afford to show weakness before the Dragon King, if he could help it. Showing even one chink in Kurikara's presence could lead to Hisoka's undoing. "I'm here to finish what I started," he said. "Kurikara, I'm here to make you my guardian."

There were a few gasps among the court, creatures who couldn't believe that a _human_ , of all low things, would dare speak to the Dragon King so brashly. And still, somehow, have his life a second later.

But mostly they laughed. At the ridiculousness of _him_ putting demands on their lord.

Even Kurikara couldn't help a wry grin. "You seem to be forgetting one thing," he said. "I swore that I would never make myself subservient to a human ever again. I haven't changed my mind about that since we last talked, Kurosaki. It is an indisputable fact: No human exists that would be capable of controlling my power."

"Good. I wouldn't want you if any _mere human_ could have you."

Some members of the audience shifted uncomfortably at his declaration, but Hisoka could sense their shock went deeper still. The audacity of him, they were doubtless thinking, to show such disrespect for the most powerful among them. He only proved that Kurikara was right to distrust the human race so. Hisoka could almost hear them vow within themselves to follow their master's example, and swear off human alliances forever.

But Hisoka could not care less what those other shiki did, or didn't do. It was Kurikara he was focused on, Kurikara to whom he took another step closer, declaring, "Because _I_ am no mere human."

"What does he mean?" Shungei said to Rikugou, to Kijin, but neither would answer her. Rikugou only smiled enigmatically, and Kijin's expression changed not at all. But both equally chilled her to her core, for what they knew and she did not.

"Why? Because you're a shinigami? You no longer count yourself among humanity's ranks because you're dead?" said a skeptical Kurikara. "Or are you saying you believe yourself alone to be worthy of me? That you are somehow superior to every other human being who has ever tried to command me? Greater than Tsuzuki—greater than even the Celestial Emperor himself? After all, even he, my Creator, could not bring me to heel."

There was a trick in that question somewhere. Surely to the denizens of Gensoukai, there could be few claims more rash than that one equalled, let alone surpassed, the Emperor in any way.

Hisoka, however, had no intention of making such claims. "I don't compare myself to anyone. I only know that you and I are exceptional—two unique examples of our kinds who also happen to be compatible, and that is enough reason for me to try for you—"

"Please," Kurikara scoffed, "stop before you say something you will not be able to walk back from, Kurosaki. We both know that you only want my power to complete your revenge. Your exalted opinion of yourself only proves it. But I am not going to swallow your lies.

"However, because I am merciful and understanding, I am willing to let you be on your way, so long as you renounce this silly delusion that you could ever command me right here and now. Though I must warn you, my friends," he said with a gesture to the room around him, "are loyal to a fault, and they might not take the disrespect you've shown my person as lightly as I do."

"You wouldn't dare to sic them on me." Of that Hisoka was confident. Just as he was sure, even if he could not quite feel it, that this talk was just a last-ditch effort of Kurikara's to get out of their duel. The mighty dragon was afraid of something and didn't want anyone else to know. But what? "This is our fight, yours and mine alone, and I know you're an honorable enough creature you wouldn't dream of polluting something that sacred by cheating. Like it or not, we are destined for one another."

"Why? Because of a few words written down in a book?" That, clearly meant for Kijin. "Books can be burned."

"Just as you tried to burn me, Kurikara? How did that work out for you the last time?"

There were whispers about the chamber. But it was Kurikara's expression Hisoka was watching sour, stubbornly holding the dragon's one good eye, as he proclaimed for the benefit of everyone in attendance: "Your fire, which _should_ be able to scorch anything it touches into oblivion, proved insufficient to rid you of me. What further proof do you need that we were meant to work together than the fact that _I'm still here_? But if words still won't convince you, then I will _show_ you why I believe myself worthy."

And with that, he closed his eyes, and put one hand on his breast.

"I call upon the spirit of vengeance that resides within me . . ." The words came to Hisoka like prophecies floating to the surface of the lake in his dreams, written in dark, serpentine ink. "The poisoned blood that flows through my veins . . ."

. . . that flowed deep in his blood, in his very cells, in his ancestry, tangled and cursed: the monster and the monster-slayer, uniting in himself. He could feel the coils rising, breaking the surface tension of his soul, as the power built within him, surging throughout every last bit of his being, down to the tips of his fingers. The ancient anger, the defiance, the resiliency of a progeny of the great Abyss at the beginning of Time:

"I command you come forth and make your presence known— _Yatonokami!_ "

As he opened his eyes again, Hisoka felt physically unchanged. Which came as some relief. His greatest fear was that summoning the yatonokami would require he relinquish all control of his body to it—the very last thing Hisoka wanted to do. So far, he was glad to see, his fingers still moved when he wanted them to, and his thoughts were still his own. He felt charged, amplified even where his senses were concerned, but he was still Hisoka.

But something must have happened, something terrible to see, for it to have inspired such a reaction of revulsion from those gathered. There were cries of "Blasphemy!" and "Demon!" among the crowd. Even Kurikara was staring at him with a kind of ungodlike horror.

"C-can he do that?" said one of the tengu nearest the dragon. "Summon a parasitic-type _within_ our own world? And somehow conceal its true form from us?"

"It isn't a kami of this world," Ame-no-Murakumo said, silencing the rabble. Sword though he was, his metallic voice curdled with a deep, righteous disgust. "A blade recognizes a blade. The child is possessed by the Sword of Night."

Hisoka chanced a brief glance down at himself then. His attire was exactly the same, he had not grown any extra limbs or lost any to a snake's tail. The only difference he could see was that his summons had inflamed the scars of Muraki's curse. They burned bright red beneath his exposed skin. Yet, somehow, Hisoka was surprised to discover, though he felt the electric tingle of their heat, they did not hurt.

To a denizen of Gensoukai, however, the change was quite apparent. The boy's eyes, already an unnaturally brilliant green, were no longer human. Their irises glowed with an inner light, striated in radial loops like the irises of a reptile. The whites around them had gone almost black, and the pupils, narrowed to slits. But most peculiar was the diamond-shaped welt in the center of his forehead. It appeared to those looking on as though something were trying to emerge there—or else open, like a third eye—but for the time being remained trapped beneath the skin.

Kurikara had to get closer for a better look. Though it filled him with a dread he was not used to feeling to do so. He could sense the deep well of power in the boy, hidden beneath this defiant but still fragile human appearance. He caught Rikugou's smug expression from the corner of his eye, and that did not allay his misgivings one iota. What did the Astrologer know that Kurikara did not? And what of Sohryuu's boy, Kijin, who also possessed the power of foresight that was woefully inaccessible to Kurikara? They had arrived separately—it was even rumored that Sohryuu had had Rikugou locked up for his insubordination—but could it be the two had planned this together? Was this just another one of the Blue Dragon's plots?

But then, why send the hated Kurosaki? Could Sohryuu have merely been hoping Kurikara would do his dirty work for him, and make quick work of crushing an enemy he dared not crush himself? No, Kurikara could not bring himself to believe even his old nemesis would think up something so devious, let alone put it into action.

But he could think of one who would. And the fact that he could not penetrate Kurosaki's veneer to touch the other mind beneath infuriated and scared him in equal measure. He knew of it not only by name and reputation. He had felt it touch his soul before. And that was enough to worry him. Now he understood why Sohryuu so badly wanted this creature eradicated from his world.

"You're abomination," he accused this Kurosaki-Yatonokami-thing that stood before him, blaspheming in this holy place by merely existing. "An unnatural freak! Enma should have put an end to you the moment you stood in his judgment!"

"But he didn't," Hisoka said. Or was it the snake within? Perhaps both, thinking and speaking with one mind? He could not tell, but strangely, did not find it particularly mattered. "He deemed me worthy of this half-life. And I believe, as I suspect you fear, he did so with good reason. That reason is what I am now here to test."

With a roar of pure disgust and rage that shook the very stone around them, Kurikara lifted himself up in the air and dove past Hisoka, his long robes wiping as he went by.

For a split second, Hisoka thought the shiki was shutting down his challenge right then and there, and that he had failed again.

But as he turned and saw Kurikara leap from the cliff into the open desert, he saw just how wrong he was. The body beneath those robes and armor grew and elongated with alarming speed into an enormous serpentine body, mail turning to steel-black and blood-red scale, saffron robes turning to flapping wings. The youth's dark hair flowed out into a long, wild mane surrounding the spiked head of a dragon, his fearsome jaws bristling with teeth like the heads of spears.

And he was quickly getting away. Again. Though the prospect of facing such a monster was a thousand times more terrifying than facing Kurikara in human form, if Hisoka didn't catch up with him soon, he feared he would lose his chance entirely, and this whole trip would have been for nothing. So, before anyone could bar his way and stop him, he leaped over the cliff as well.

When his feet hit the desert sand, he unslung his bow and nocked an arrow. But Kurikara was already so far away. What chance did Hisoka have of even hitting the dragon at this distance?

"Get on!" Senrima said as she appeared beside him in horse form.

But Hisoka shook his head. "I can't accept your help. I have to fight Kurikara myself—"

"And you will. But you can't fight 'im if you can't catch up to 'im. Can you?"

She was right, of course. He would never catch Kurikara going on foot, or even if he used his shinigami powers to fly. Trying either would only succeed in wearing him out. Acknowledging that, Hisoka leaped up on her back, clinging tight to her body as she took off in pursuit.

Though perhaps Hisoka had misread Kurikara's intentions all along. He wasn't running away. As they raced across the sand, Hisoka saw the great dragon turn around the back of a floating mesa—and head straight back toward him. Senrima saw it too, and stopped in her tracks. While she was plotting what to do next, Hisoka raised his bow again, and sighted the dragon down the arrow's shaft.

" _Since Enma did not destroy you when he had the chance,_ " Kurikara's voice boomed over the valley, " _I will correct his mistake myself. And this time, I shall make doubly sure I finish the job. Kurosaki Hisoka, prepare yourself for your end!_ "

And this time, as he neared, Hisoka felt the blood drain from his face. He had grossly underestimated Kurikara's size. Though Sohryuu still had him beat on that measure, Kurikara had expanded still further in what time he had spent circling around. He dwarfed the sentinels of rock that surrounded his headquarters, and his hide bristled with scales whose edges were as long and honed as swords themselves. His jaws alone looked large enough to swallow a minivan whole, to say nothing of a horse and her teenage rider.

Senrima must have realized the same thing, for Hisoka barely had a moment to lower his bow, hold on, and shout "Run!" before she was sprinting for all she was worth out of the dragon's path.

* * *

It was official. Gensoukai was now Kazuma's least favorite place to visit, of all time.

First there had been the underground march with the tsuchigumo all through the night, during which time she and Nonomiya's hands had been bound behind their backs and their arms pinned to their sides by spider silk.

Then an audience with Kurikara himself and his generals, where the two shinigami got to listen to Kijin promise Kurikara both their lives if he should act in any manner deemed threatening to the Dragon King. Kijin may have made that promise with the best intentions, but looking around at the other faces in the throne room, Kazuma wondered if some of them might be plotting to pick a fight, just for the pleasure of declaring open season on a couple of human souls.

She and Nonomiya were just trying to make the best of their dire situation, listening in on the overtures to peace talks between Kijin and Kurikara (fraught with tension as those were) when a message came in that sent the whole court into chaos, and the two Peacekeepers were whisked out of it. Rather bodily, as it turned out, by a couple of the tsuchigumo themselves. It was all Kazuma could do not to scream like a little girl. As irrational as she told herself it was, especially now that she was dead, she'd never been able to overcome her fear of spiders.

When the giant man-spiders finally released the two women—"dumped" was a more appropriate choice of word—it was in what appeared to be a storeroom, filled with crates and clay jars even taller than they were. Even just righting herself was a painful ordeal. The spider silk bit into Kazuma wherever she moved against it, cutting like razor wire; and to make their situation worse, the tsuchigumo had taken the liberty of hobbling their ankles with fresh silk before locking them in the room.

As though even _that_ couldn't get any worse, barely a minute had gone by before Kazuma heard Nonomiya's quiet sniffles.

Curled on her side on the floor, and facing away from Kazuma, she tried to hide her distress from her partner, but she couldn't keep it out of her voice. "We're going to die here, aren't we? I mean, really die. As in, for keeps this time."

"Nah," Kazuma said, as much for her own benefit as Nonomiya's. "We'll find a way out of here. That, or Kijin will realize what a dick he was to us and set us free."

Needless to say, Nonomiya wasn't banking on the second option. "Tsuchigumo silk is supposed to be one of the toughest materials there is. We'd have to practically cut our hands and feet off to get out of it. But it doesn't matter," she tried her hardest not to sob, "because based on what we just left, it looks like Kurikara is fixing to have a barbecue, and we're going to be the main course—"

Kazuma had heard enough. Ever so carefully, she scooted herself over to Nonomiya, and tried her best to help her partner into a sitting position, despite their restraints. "Come on, now, Kochou. Buck up. You're the one who's always been so good at keeping any situation positive, and I could _really_ use that positivity right about now. We're going to get out of here, I guarantee it, because I won't let anything happen to you. I promise you that. Even if I have to cut off my hands and feet—honestly, they don't mean as much to me as you do."

That earned her a little laugh, as Nonomiya tried unsuccessfully to wipe her tears on the shoulder of her blouse. "Oh, Shin. . . . Do you think you can ever forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive." And Kazuma meant it.

"Of course there is. I've been just awful to you, and I can't stand the thought that one or both of us might end up in oblivion by the end of the day and I never set things right.

"You have to understand, I was hurt when I thought you had abandoned me and our principles," Nonomiya confessed, "but that didn't give me a right to take that pain out on you. Especially without even trying to get your side of the story. I was so angry about the whole thing, I didn't stop to realize that the one I was most angry at was myself. Well, and Chief Todoroki for giving you those orders," Nonomiya amended with a frustrated hiccup, earning a little sympathetic chuckle from Kazuma.

Then she sobered.

"But the truth is, I just missed you so much, I wanted to explode every time I thought about it. I _still_ miss you so much—even more, if that's possible, because you've been right here next to me this entire trip, and I've been too proud to just tell you how I feel! Shin, I don't want this thing standing between us any longer. What's done is done, and if this is to be our last day in existence, I can't let it all end without telling you how deeply, truly sorry I am for wasting all that time on petty resentments and suspicions—"

"That makes two of us," Kazuma cut her off, not wanting to waste another word on either one of those things herself. She laid her head on Nonomiya's shoulder, relieved to her core when Nonomiya did not shrug her away, or even stiffen under her, but rather relaxed, and leaned closer too.

"If— _when_ we get out of this," Nonomiya said, trying her best to swallow her fears and frustration, though not entirely succeeding by the sound of it, "I want us to be partners again. I'll beg the chief to reinstate me as a Peacekeeper, in front of the whole department if I must—"

"You don't have to do that," Kazuma started, but Nonomiya would not be dissuaded.

" _Whatever it takes_ , Shin. Whatever it takes for us to be a team again. I want you back. More than anything."

Kazuma was relieved Nonomiya couldn't see the tears burning in the corners of her eyes, misting up her vision, before Kazuma had a chance to blink them away. And that made her grin, despite their dire circumstances. She was just so damned happy to hear those words. There was nothing else she could think of to say, because she wanted the exact same thing. Well, that and to give Kochou a big mushy kiss, but baby steps.

A voice saying "Aw, doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside" above them made them both look up.

To where the brown face of a saber-toothed little boy was staring down at them with a gooey look in his eyes. "Yali!" both women said at the same time. "You followed us!"

"I knew you wouldn't give up on us that easily!"

Yali swung himself down from the beams, landing with the silence of a cat. "I don't think anyone noticed me sneak in. Everyone's too distracted with what's been going on since Kurosaki arrived and challenged the Dragon King to a duel."

It took Kazuma a second to understand what he meant. And when she did, she forgot how sharp her bonds bit and started struggling in earnest. "He's going to fight Kurikara? That's the whole reason we came here—to prevent the kid from doing just that!"

"There's only two ways we can see this going," Nonomiya explained for her shiki's benefit. "Either Kurosaki gets himself destroyed trying to win Kurikara, or he succeeds, and brings back a shikigami so powerful he won't be able to control it."

"And it'll be a disaster all over again!" Kazuma said through her teeth. "We need to stop this madness before either one of those things can happen. Yali, do you think you can untie us?"

The young shiki took a good long look at their bonds. His hum didn't exactly sound positive. "Tsuchigumo silk is one of the toughest materials there is, pound for pound," he echoed Nonomiya's words. "But I might be able to bite through it. Not without hurting you, though. They wound you missies up tight."

Nonomiya practically sobbed her relief. "That's okay! If you do end up cutting us, we'll heal in no time."

"Yeah," Kazuma put in, "do whatever you have to, but get us free!"

Changing to his animal form, Yali managed to hook his canines between the shinigami's skin and the spider silk, and saw through the threads until they snapped. True to his warning, both women suffered some deep cuts to their arms and ankles that bled profusely, but it was a small price for a shinigami to pay. Then the three raced out of the storeroom—

And nearly collided with Kokushungei, who was just coming to check on them.

Kazuma saw the look of recognition pass over the shiki's face before she recognized Shungei herself, by the stripes and horns and the braided loops in her black mane. Shungei glared. "What are _you_ doing running around? Aren't you supposed to be tied up awaiting your fates?"

"Please, Shungei," Nonomiya tried, "we have to stop Kurosaki before he makes a huge mistake—"

Kazuma noticed how Shungei's expression softened a bit when she turned to Nonomiya; but it was no surprise that after spending all that time in Terazuma's body, the bulk of the Black Lion's wrath was reserved for Kazuma. "Yeah, I don't think so. I came to retrieve the two of you to make sure Kijin keeps his word, but on behalf of my king, I won't allow you to interfere."

"Your king?" Kazuma parroted. So Shungei had gone running back to her old liege after all, the moment he stood an actual chance of winning his war against Sohryuu. _I guess that means she and Terazuma aren't getting back together any time soon._

"That's what Kijin said too," Nonomiya put in, much to Shungei's surprise. "He said he couldn't let anyone come between Kurosaki and his destiny."

" _Kurosaki's_ destiny?" Shungei put a hand to her forehead. For a moment, doubt that she was in the right place crossed her features. "Hold up. I thought Kijin came with you guys to negotiate a ceasefire. Are you telling me getting the kid here to fight Kurikara was his real plan all along?"

"Who cares—we're wasting time! Your orders can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned," Kazuma said, causing Shungei to recoil at her brusqueness. "That's our colleague out there, about to make the biggest mistake of his brief existence, and I for one am not going to just sit back and let him do it! So if I have to go through you to get to him, then let's hurry it up and see what you've got!"

"Fine with me," said the shiki, stretching her neck with a crack and a pop. "I look forward to taking you down a peg or two."

And Shungei grinned as she hefted her staff. With the click of a release, a three-pronged blade sprang out of one end.

That was about the moment Kazuma realized, just a little too late, that Suugo still had her pistol, and she had brought nothing but her fists to a knife fight.

* * *

A firestorm blazed at Hisoka's back, so close he could smell horse hair singe. A jet of fire turned the desert sand into glass as it burned a trail after him, licking at Senrima's heels.

 _Are you okay?_ Hisoka asked her telepathically as he clung to her neck. _Can't you outrun this?_

 _If I did, it would defeat the point,_ the answer came back, while the horse snorted beneath him, steam trailing from her snout. _You have to be close if you're going to get your shot._

 _Not so close it kills you._

Hisoka thought he could detect a wry grin from Senrima, as she lowered her head into the cooler air in front of them. _Don't worry about me! Just be ready to seize your chance!_

But it seemed to Hisoka there was such a thing as too close. Kurikara swooped through the blaze, parting the flames practically on top of them. His wings created tornados of fire as they sliced the air, the mirror-slick scales of his belly glowing from the furnace within, like steel pulled straight from the forge, in a rainbow of infernal reds and golds. So close, Hisoka could feel the immense weight of the dragon, pressing down on him, even as Kurikara shot effortlessly through the air.

Gripping his mount tight between his knees, Hisoka raised his bow, and fired into what he thought would be a soft spot in that armored hide, in the joint beneath one of the dragon's legs.

Kurikara grunted as he rolled away. The arrow had struck its mark, with the explosive force of a missile. Emboldened, Hisoka nocked another one.

But it seemed after a moment that his shot had done little more than rile Kurikara, and make him only more hellbent on destroying Hisoka. The dragon collided with one of the floating monoliths that littered the desert, crumbling against it with all his weight. Even so, Kurikara was twice as long as the monolith was tall. And stronger than whatever mysterious force was keeping it in suspension. Beneath his push, the monolith tilted, and then, as Kurikara kicked off of it, plummeted toward the ground—directly in Senrima's path.

It was all she could do, at the speed she was traveling, to alter her course. Hisoka felt himself nearly thrown from her back as she banked just in time. The monolith crumbled beside them, falling into the desert bedrock with a din that rattled Hisoka's skeleton. Boulders flew after them, propelled off one another as the mother rock broke apart. Each missile seemed to land closer than the next, and Hisoka feared at any moment, as the dust swirled up to choke them, that the next boulder would crush him for sure.

But with Senrima running full-out, they made it out of harm's way—just in time to see Kurikara swooping through the dust cloud head-on, teeth gleaming with the next fiery burst building within him.

Time seemed to slow as Hisoka watched that living death moving toward him. Instinct took over—or, perhaps, the yatonokami. His pulse slowed, and a calmness came over Hisoka the moment he relented his control to that consciousness within. He felt as though he could see everything in a clarity and detail that should have been impossible, even while the world around him went on at normal speed.

This must be how Rikugou feels, Hisoka thought as the downbeat of Kurikara's wings appeared to take twice as long. Feeling like a passenger in his own body, he released his death grip on Senrima and raised his bow. His breaths and the beats of his heart synched to the rhythm of the horse's footfalls as he drew back on the bowstring, and sighted Kurikara's scarred eye down the arrow's shaft—

Kurikara must have seen what he was doing, for his other eye flew wide with realization, and he rolled away just as Hisoka released the shot. The ensuing gust of wind was so strong, not to mention the deadly whip of his tail that nearly took Hisoka's head off, that Hisoka had no way of knowing where his arrow had flown to, or if it had made it to its mark at all.

" _You carry the catalpa bow,_ " Kurikara's voice boomed over the plain as he moved to circle at a slightly safer distance. " _Where did you find it—never mind that, how can you fire it?_ "

It wasn't difficult, Hisoka wanted to say, but the way Kurikara asked, it seemed the dragon expected it to be impossible. "It came to me!" Hisoka answered him over the wind. "Why shouldn't I be able to use it?"

" _I don't believe that. Someone must have given it to you—but it was not theirs to give. I recognize the handiwork of those arrowheads. I forged them myself. And now you presume to turn them against me?_ " Kurikara roared in outrage. " _You would set them upon their own creator?_ "

It took Hisoka another moment to realize that buried in that roar was a command. A summons, in fact, to Kurikara's two swords, Ame-no-Murakumo, and the dragon's right hand, the blade that had nearly cost Hisoka his existence the first time he came to Gensoukai: Futsu-no-Mitama.

They came at their master's command like fighter jets streaking to the rescue. Hisoka felt what was left of his hope sink into his stomach. Trying to stay alive against an enormous dragon was one thing, but he knew just how relentless Futsu could be when he was out for blood; and seeing that massive sword zooming right for him, whatever help he was getting from Yatonokami and Senrima didn't feel like enough. He felt like he was reliving that terrifying day all over again, when he had known the fear of death as only Muraki had ever been able to make him fear it.

"Your neck is mine, Kurosaki," the familiar voice of the sentient sword seemed to whisper in his ear, it was following so closely; and if it had been able to breathe, Hisoka was sure he would have felt it on his skin. He saw the whites of Senrima's eyes as she tried to track the sword in her vision, and felt the terror within her. It did not instill confidence, knowing that even a shiki of her power dreaded the deadly prowess of that sword.

"I don't know how you managed to survive our lord's holy fire the first time," Futsu went on, his words, dripping with hatred, seeming to slice their way into Hisoka's brain, "but it will not happen again. Of that I will make sure. It will be my pleasure to strike your accursed head clean from your body, with the full blessing of my master—"

A massive gray-blue shape swooped down over them and plucked Futsu-no-Mitama out of the way by its handle before it could make good on its promises. Turning his head to follow it, Hisoka saw what looked like an enormous moth or bird, flinging Futsu far away where, for the moment at least, it could do no harm.

Ame-no-Murakumo looped around to finish the job its colleague had started. But Rikugou was there waiting for it, flying to intercept it in bird form. With a flap of his sharp-edged wings, and encircled by his long tail, time stood still for the sword alone, and Ame-no-Murakumo hovered motionless in midair. "This fight is a little unbalanced, don't you think?" Rikugou said. "Three of you against one little human child?"

Meanwhile the gray-blue moth-bird moved in to deal the next blow: a barrage of lightning that struck Ame-no-Murakumo from multiple angles, and sent it shooting straight down into the desert sands below, where it sparked and stuck fast.

"What are you so afraid of," Kijin's voice resonated from the other beast, "that you have to have your minions do your work for you, Kurikara?"

Futsu-no-Mitama, not to be counted out so quickly, rocketed back into the arena; but Rikugou and Kijin soon had him corralled and out of commission as well. To someone watching from the ground, it almost seemed as though the two enormous birds were playing with some tiny toy sword; next to their sizes and power, Hisoka could almost forget how lethal Futsu had nearly proved to him. He could almost forget, but not nearly enough that he didn't appreciate the bullet he had just dodged.

" _Enough of your meddling!_ " Kurikara growled at the two. But his blazing eye had nothing but Hisoka in it. " _You want a fair fight? Kurosaki! Cease this futile running! Stand and face me on your own two feet!"_

Hisoka did not hesitate a moment. He urged Senrima to halt, and slid off her back as soon as she slowed to a speed it wouldn't injure him to fall from.

"What are you doing?" she whinnied, but she could not force him to get back on. "You want to get yourself killed?"

"He's right," Hisoka told her. "This is our fight, mine and Kurikara's. No one else's. I appreciate your help, but if I'm going to prove that I'm worthy to command him, I need to do this alone."

"You're mad, Kurosaki." But she managed a lopsided grin, even in horse form. "But I haven't seen that stop you yet."

With a muttered "Good luck" she left him to stare down Kurikara alone, nothing but a bow and a handful of arrows to defend himself with.

So he nocked another one—and realized as he stared down it at the oncoming dragon, he had no idea how to bring such a beast to yield with just an arrow, even if they were forged by Kurikara himself. Was it possible Kurikara could have some weak point, some Achilles heel that would bring him down? _Focus. Think._ He calmed his breathing, feeling his heart slow, his mind open up as it had before. The other consciousness stirred, ready to offer its help. _Where would a huge, fire-breathing dragon be most vulnerable?_

 _You're kidding, right? Did you see that hide? Nukes couldn't penetrate that armor. Think about it. If even Sohryuu couldn't bring him down . . ._

No. It had to work. Why mention the catalpa bow by name unless there was some significance to it? Either the bow or the arrows or both seemed to know just where the shooter wanted, _needed_ the shot to go. He sent a silent prayer to his weapons, trusting them to find their mark, and released the bow string. Watched the arrow fly true towards its target, heading for Kurikara's breast—

With a flick of his wrist, as if merely swatting at a fly, Kurikara hit the arrow away with the back of his paw. The next was deflected with a butt of his head, its explosion dissipating harmlessly behind him. And he kept coming.

Hisoka did the only thing he could think of in the moment. He ran. Toward the only shelter he could find: a weathered tower of rock jutting out of the desert floor. But whether it would provide him any shelter whatsoever, let alone whether he would make it there in time, he could not say. Only that challenging Kurikara to this battle in retrospect seemed like a very bad idea. Once again, despite everyone warning him what would happen, he had let his ego lead him toward certain doom. And once again, he had come grossly under-prepared to face it.

Kurikara dove for him, his lashing tail churning up the stone and sand as he came down. There was no outrunning him on foot, or in flight. But there was one trick in Hisoka's arsenal that could get him to that outcrop in time—except for the fact that he had never been able to get it to work in Gensoukai before.

Still, he had to try. The earth was tilting beneath his feet, lifting him up off solid ground. The dragon's breath burned the back of his neck. Hisoka concentrated with all his might on the rocks in front of him, and willed himself there, just as Kurikara's full mass descended upon him.

* * *

The first thing Yali did when he understood what was about to go down was to grab hold of his tail in both paws. A bubble shield popped up around himself and Nonomiya, after which he could urge his mistress to back up towards a more defensible position and give the other two more space to fight.

Which was for the best, since the last thing Kazuma needed to concern herself with right now was Nonomiya's safety. It was enough of a struggle to have to save her own skin. With an indignant roar, Kokushungei started the duel with an opening salvo of jabs and blows with her staff and trident, which it was all Kazuma could do to dodge. And not without catching a few wicked scratches from the trident's blades. She tried to block a blow of the staff at one point, and felt her left ulna shatter with the impact. Even for a shinigami, not an ideal injury to suffer early in a fight.

But one thing Kazuma had always been able to rely on was her feet. When Shungei's next swing sent her trident into the floor, Kazuma grabbed hold of the shaft and aimed a sharp kick to the side of the shiki's head. She grinned as she felt it connect and Shungei's hold on the staff loosen just enough to let Kazuma wrest it from her.

But Kazuma's victory didn't last long. She should have known something with horns like Shungei's would have a thick skull to match; and rather than knock Shungei out of sorts, Kazuma's blow only enraged her.

With a snarl, Shungei exploded in size, changing into the long-haired black lion of her namesake. Inky flames scorched the stone floor where her massive paws stepped. She bared her teeth at Kazuma, who, for a second, was so surprised by the transformation she didn't know what to do next. She tried lunging with the staff—but a swipe of Shungei's paw sent it flying out of Kazuma's hands. Not to mention singed them.

Kazuma hissed, holding her hands to her midsection instinctively, and Nonomiya called out to her in concern. But Kazuma couldn't afford to pay her partner any attention. The Black Lion was bearing down on her, and Kazuma had to duck and roll to keep from being flattened or cooked or both by those paws. To say nothing of being skewered by those horns.

The horns! That was it. If Kazuma could get on top of Kokushungei, she would be out of the way of both. All she had to do was time things just right and . . .

There! Shungei tilted her head to try to stab Kazuma with one of her horns, and the shinigami seized her chance. Grabbing the horn with her right hand, she vaulted herself up on top of the Black Lion, straddled her neck, got herself a fistful of Shungei's mane, and tugged with all her might.

Shungei roared as her scalp stung. She shook her neck like a dog trying to shake off the rain, but Kazuma—though she was silently freaking out and holding on for dear life—refused to be moved. When her efforts failed, Shungei raised herself up on her hind legs, trying with all her might to brush Kazuma off with her front paws; but in her current form, she could not quite reach the shinigami.

What was more, she had chosen the worst place to fight in her immense animal form. The ceilings of the cavern complex were low, and the sandstone brittle enough that her horns cleaved away large chunks of rock when they scraped the ceiling. It was all Kazuma could do not to get squished up against it, and after a few moments of the tactic, she feared that was exactly what Shungei was trying to do to her.

In her desperation, the Black Lion breathed jets of black flame, and they soon filled up the chamber, leaving the air scorched and painful to breathe. Kazuma coughed as she fought to keep her hold—though was relieved to see that Shungei's flames did not penetrate Yali's shield. Now, if she could just come up with some way to survive this crazy-ass rodeo herself. . . .

A swath of silk fabric, still unscorched, caught Kazuma's eye. It was a long shot, but if she could somehow tie up this bad girl, she might be able to convince Shungei to agree to a draw. Digging her heels hard into the sensitive spot behind Shungei's ears, and yanking back on her braids, Kazuma managed to get Shungei to swing hard the way she wanted her. The Black Lion roared and hissed and tried to rub the stinging pain away, but after a few such kicks, Kazuma succeeded in maneuvering her just close enough to hook a couple of fingers into a fold of the silk.

It was enough. She gave it a good strong tug, just as Shungei bucked hard beneath her. Kazuma felt her balance slip, and the fabric was torn from her fingers, catching on Shungei's horns and blinding her. The shiki stomped and screamed in frustration, but her voice seemed less a lion's now and more like a woman's.

Kazuma felt the body beneath her start to shrink, and hope surged within her in inverse proportions. She was able to hook one arm around the shiki's neck now, holding the fabric tightly in place, while, ignoring the shooting pain in it, she looped the other around one of Shungei's horns and pulled with all her might. It would take all her might to hold on as Shungei struggled to break out of her hold, tearing at Kazuma's arms with dagger-like nails. But after a few seconds of it, the shiki seemed to realize that she wasn't getting anywhere fast.

"Give up yet?!" Kazuma muttered between breaths. "Will you swear not to kill us or stand in our way?"

To her surprise, Shungei let out a hearty laugh beneath her. "Well. Isn't this an ironic turn of events?" But it seemed that was meant more for herself than for Kazuma. "Silly human. I never intended to kill you or your partner. At least, not until you challenged me. But you've impressed me with your skill, much as I hate to admit that."

 _So . . . is that a yes?_

"I relent," Shungei said, though it seemed to take enormous will power on her part.

Kazuma released her hold and let the shiki go, and within seconds they were joined by Yali and Nonomiya. "Does this mean you'll let us finish our mission?" the latter said, as Shungei disentangled herself from the cloth.

"I don't like it," the Black Lion said, fluffing her tousled mane, "and I'm sure to catch hell for it if I let you do what you plan to do. But if it's what Miss Kazuma wishes, then I don't see what choice I have in the matter."

That was when it finally hit Kazuma. She went still in shock. She'd thought this was just a fight to get past an obstacle standing between them and stopping Hisoka. But when Shungei called her "Miss Kazuma," not "you" with a spiteful accent, or some nasty variation thereof—

 _Oh no. We couldn't possibly have . . ._

Nonomiya grabbing her arm pulled Kazuma from her thoughts. "Come on. There's no telling how long Kurosaki and Kurikara have been at it. Let's just hope we're not too late to help."

* * *

Hisoka leaned heavily against the wall of the sandstone cavern as he caught his breath. He could hardly believe he had just successfully teleported within Gensoukai, even if it had only been for a distance of several meters.

But he wasn't safe yet. He could hear Kurikara snorting and scrabbling against the outside of the rocky outcrop, searching for a way in. Hisoka may have won himself a shelter in which to recharge his energy and think about his next plan of attack, but it was ultimately a trap. One he could not get out of without going through the dragon. _Out of the fire and back in the pan._

" _Come out!"_ Kurikara growled, frustration and the fire bubbling in his throat making his words all but unintelligible. " _Face me, you coward, or I will tear this mountain apart, stone by stone!_ "

Hisoka had no doubt Kurikara could make good on that promise. He could bring the whole thing down on Hisoka and bury him here, if he so chose.

So why didn't he?

Then Hisoka understood. He didn't know why it had taken him so long to get it. The jets of fire, the monoliths turned projectiles, calling upon his swords to finish Hisoka off for him . . .

 _He's afraid to touch me._

Or else afraid to get close enough for Hisoka to touch him. Hisoka knew enough of Gensoukai by now to know the power of prophecy here. Gods feared it. Dragons as mighty as Sohryuu feared it. So why should Kurikara be any different?

Nor was Hisoka unsympathetic. He knew what it was to battle against your own fate, against inevitability—how it felt to be desperate to change what the universe told you you could not. That was why Sohryuu hated him so—why it took all his love of Tsuzuki to stay his hand when he was standing face-to-face with Hisoka. He was so convinced Hisoka would be the death of his world that doing nothing in the shinigami's presence felt like betraying some great promise, and condemning everyone he cared about.

But what prophecy had Kurikara scared? The knowledge that his and Hisoka's compatibility had been written in the stars from the latter's birth? Surely it wasn't the end of the world to become a shinigami's personal guardian. Terazuma's case aside, the other shiki Hisoka had met all seemed happy to do it. Those who served Tsuzuki did so largely because they loved him. So why did Kurikara fight the idea of servitude as strongly as he did? Surely it couldn't be just a dragon's pride.

What was it that made him hate humanity the way he did? Because as much as he claimed to despise Hisoka, his hatred went far deeper than that, and much, much farther back.

Whatever it was, Hisoka had other problems to concern himself with at the moment. A shaft of light opened up above him as Kurikara broke a chunk of rock free, and a glowing eye the size of a shield glared down at Hisoka through it. He tried to fit his snout into the opening, cracking it wider with each thrust of his head and snort of scalding steam.

Hisoka fired another explosive arrow at him. But it only aided Kurikara's cause. Shaking off the pain, Kurikara wedged his head into the opening, and Hisoka had only seconds to move himself deeper into the spaces between the rocks before a blast of flame and scorching-hot air filled the cavern.

Even as he made it to safety, Hisoka could feel the inferno singe his clothes and hair. Singe his skin. He hissed as he saw the top layers of flesh had melted off the back of his right hand.

" _The Emperor's bow won't save you, child_ ," Kurikara mocked him. _"_ _I'm surprised it let you use it at all, with that_ worm _slithering inside you._ "

The _Emperor's_ bow? So that was why everyone seemed so shocked that he possessed it. An artifact like that couldn't have spent the last few millennia lying around somewhere where just anyone could take it. Hisoka had been right to suspect it had been placed in that worn-down hut for him to find. _Kijin._ Who else would have had the access, or the guts to put it in Hisoka's hands? Once more he realized he owed Sohryuu's son a debt he could never repay.

But it would give him no more help now. With his hand burnt to a crisp, Hisoka couldn't very well draw back the string. And in any case, the only good those arrows seemed to do was sting Kurikara and piss him off.

" _You_ _pollute everything you touch_ ," the dragon went on. _"_ _It's no wonder Sohryuu wanted you destroyed. He must have known the moment he saw you, that your nature is but filth. You bring only destruction into this world—and still you expect me to kneel?!"_

An apocalyptic vision danced behind Hisoka's eyes. A sky dark as blood, a land scorched and barren of all life, rivers on fire. . . . And above it all, a black serpent, the avatar of that despair, which even those that had unleashed it could no longer control. Was this the yatonokami he was looking at? What it wanted to do, if it gained control of Hisoka's body? A prophecy, of the end of Gensoukai?

 _No. . . . A memory. Touda. The Emperor summoned him from the Abyss to stop Kurikara, but he only made things worse. . . ._

 _Does he think I'll do the same?_

" _You selfish, impudent humans,"_ Kurikara fumed, " _you're all alike in the end. Using us—us_ gods _! For your own selfish ends. That's all we ever were to your kind. Tools. Weapons. Pets and playthings. Until we no longer obey. Until we no longer serve any purpose to you. The only reason you want me now is to enact your revenge. You tried to use Rikugou for it, and when that failed, you thought you'd come back and get yourself a bigger gun._ "

You're wrong, Hisoka wanted to tell him. That isn't why I came at all. But could he really look the dragon in the eye and deny it? Even now, a part of him, a very loud part of him, thrilled at the idea of unleashing Kurikara on Muraki. To see justice done so spectacularly. And to know with absolute certainty that Muraki would never return to hurt him. . . .

 _No,_ he told himself. That was a different Hisoka, a younger, more naïve one, who had believed he could triumph over his killer only by making himself stronger. Now he knew how deluded he had been.

Kurikara was wrong, if not in the way he would have thought. He _was_ a weapon. But wielding him would never make Hisoka stronger. And it wasn't to rid himself of Muraki that Hisoka needed him so badly.

Then Hisoka knew what he needed to do. He set down the bow, and unstrapped the quiver of arrows from his shoulders. His heart pounded so hard in his chest with anxiety that he felt like it would burst, and his limbs trembled and threatened to mutiny his decision. But he had to do it. Whatever the outcome may be, even if he should be destroyed in the process, he had to try. If he didn't, he would certainly be destroyed anyway. It was only a matter of time.

While Kurikara was distracted, trying to pry open the rock, Hisoka climbed upward through the cracks, until he emerged into the open air at the top of the outcrop. "So which am I, Kurikara!" he shouted. "A human, or a worm!"

Kurikara rose up above him, his towering bulk blocking out the sun. But Hisoka did not find himself in shadow. He could see the fire churning behind the dragon's scales, and knew that it was meant for him. The rock shook beneath his feet as Kurikara clutched it in his front paws, and his tail circled and lashed about the peak of the outcrop, its scales cleaving off large chunks of stone. There was nowhere Hisoka could run to now.

Yet somehow, facing down his imminent death, he felt fear leave him, and could appreciate the magnificent beauty of the beast. As when he stood before Sohryuu's true form, whatever dispute Hisoka had had with Kurikara in his human form fell away, leaving him in awe of the dragon's raw power. He could feel it surround him, along with the immensity of Kurikara's determination to destroy him.

And with it: his fear. It was only that that kept Kurikara from striking immediately.

"If both of those are so beneath you," Hisoka taunted him, "then why don't you crush me already! You know I won't stop until you're mine! You'll never be rid of me. This won't end until either you kneel before me—or I cease to exist!"

The dragon's whiskered face twitched in a wry grin, and a chuckle resonated low within him. " _If that's your choice . . ._ "

His massive paw shot out to seize Hisoka in its grip, and Hisoka's heart sank into his stomach as he was yanked high into the air. Arms pinned to his side, he could do nothing but watch as the dragon's gaping maw descended and snapped shut upon him, sealing him in darkness and stabbing pain.

* * *

 _. . . then die._

* * *

 _He could remember happy times and moments when he was loved. Times of laughter and light and song and gentle breezes. Friendly competition, and a home where green things grew in abundance._

 _Times when he felt like he belonged._

 _He knew they had once existed only because he felt the loss of them, like a keen blade, twisting in his gut. How it wounded him, to be rebuked by the one he had thought would be most pleased with him, most proud. How it enraged him, that he could not hate that one for now turning such harsh words upon him._

" _I only did it to help them!" he shouted back, trying to keep the unshed tears from being heard in his voice. "Isn't that what you made me to do? You always said we were put in this world to_ guide _humanity—to make life better for them—"_

" _By giving them the tools of their own destruction?" Sohryuu lambasted him._

 _But he shook his head. No . . . "No, that wasn't what I did at all. I gave them what they needed to save themselves! It's selfish of us to keep this knowledge to ourselves, when those people down there are struggling in the dirt just to survive. Isn't it only right we share what we have? Shouldn't we want them to be more like us? I was only trying to protect them—"_

" _What do you think the rest of us have been trying to do all along!" Sohryuu's teeth were bared with barely contained rage. He wanted to strike something—but it would do nothing to alleviate his anger. He abhorred violence, all the more when he committed it, but he could not let this grave offense slide._

 _Reading his mood, Rikugou interjected, with a calmly raised hand: "What Sohryuu means is that humanity isn't ready, Kurikara."_

 _Kurikara?_ Hisoka thought. Then he remembered where he was, that he had quite literally thrown himself into the jaws of the dragon. _Of course._ _Then this must be one of his. . . ._

" _They're like infants compared to us,"_ the Astrologer went on in his precise elocution, sounding not at all different from the Rikugou that Hisoka knew now. _"_ _They will not understand. They will take the gifts you give them, and they will turn them against us. They won't need us to protect them anymore. They'll forget about us. And then they'll turn on each other."_

" _You're wrong! You don't know them like I do. You have them all wrong!" Of that, Kurikara could not be more sure._

 _Though he saw Rikugou sigh, and Genbu mutter to his pupil that he had tried his best but there was no reasoning with dragons when they put their minds to something._

 _But it was the face behind them all that broke his heart, as though it were a pot thrown and shattered on the floor. That noble face, with its eyes of bottomless peace, like the purple clouds of Paradise, that could be so kind and father-like to him one moment—and so cruel the next. That man turned His head away, if only by a few degrees, but Kurikara felt as though His heart had been turned from him completely. Kurikara had been given up, in an instant, as a lost cause._

" _You think you know better than anyone else what's best for humanity?" Sohryuu scoffed, but to Kurikara it was as though that man had said it._

" _I will prove it to you!" he shouted back at them. Back at all of them. "I'll prove to you I'm right! And when I do, it's_ me _the humans will worship as their savior!_ I _will be their god, and the rest of you will be sorry you ever stood against me!"_

 _Shooting pain erupted in his right eye. He screamed, dropping to his knees as he clutched at his face. Ichor poured like water through his fingers, like a river of tears, but it was the pain that was unending. Not just severed tissues and robbed sight, but the burning, stabbing ache of betrayal that he knew no amount of time would ever heal. No matter how he screamed, trying to empty himself of the hurt in his gut, it would never heal._

" _Sohryuu, please!" The others tried to hold him back. Genbu cursed and Rikugou, like a patient wife, tried to soothe the Blue Dragon with his touch. Suzaku and Byakko raced to put themselves between the two, to break up the tension before a worse fight could develop._

 _But from that man . . . nothing. Sohryuu stood there with Kurikara's blood on his blade, and He did_ _nothing_.

" _I will never forgive you for this! Do you hear me? I swear it on the fires of the Earth and every last star in the sky: From this moment on, you are DEAD TO ME!"_

 _But time passed, and it wasn't long before he heard the same words being wailed back at him, from ten thousand different throats._ _ **We trusted you! How could you do this to us? We only did as you made us. Why did you turn yourself against us?**_

 _No! he wanted to scream. Stop. Please. It was_ you _who turned against_ me. _After all I did for you—_

 _ **We will never forgive you!**_

Hisoka felt the pain in his core as though it had been his all along. And with it came shock. All this time, after everything Kurikara had said about hating humanity, and the truth had been the other way around. It was because he loved humanity that he could not put himself in a place of servitude to them again. He could not force himself to bear that unbearable pain again: the pain of betrayal.

And self-loathing, for having betrayed them in turn. When, true to Rikugou's warning, the humans had blamed Kurikara for giving them the tools to destroy each other, he had turned on them. Torched their villages, and razed cities he'd once helped to raise with his own hands. Set the very rivers and lakes on fire until the earth was dry and barren. And devoured them, the very people he had longed to protect, just like the monster they accused him of being. Until the Emperor had had no choice. Kurikara had to be stopped.

Hisoka felt his heart break for him, for even just having this glimpse into what it was like to be Kurikara was almost more than he could bear. He could feel the dragon's rage, the furnace in his belly from which there was no relief, calling to his own and making it seem like an ember in comparison. He could taste human blood in his own mouth, slipping through his jaws as self-control slipped through his fingers. What did Hisoka have to feel sorry for himself for? Everything he had endured had been done _to_ him. But having to live with knowing you were responsible for murdering the people you loved, having to endure their unending hatred, knowing it wasn't just what you were, but that you had actually done plenty to deserve it . . .

He found it hard enough to try to understand where someone like Tsuzuki found the strength to keep going, after seventy-five years of sanctioned killing.

How much harder was it for an immortal god to bear?

Hisoka opened his eyes, expecting to see Kurikara's teeth impaling his flesh.

But they weren't. In fact, none of them touched him. They hovered mere centimeters from his skin each time Kurikara snapped his jaws. But as if some invisible force field were keeping him from doing so, Kurikara could not seem to close them on Hisoka.

The same, however, could not be said for Hisoka. A double-edged blade, as long as a rapier and curved like a viper's fang, protruded from his forehead where before only a welt had been. Hisoka was only aware of its presence because each time Kurikara tried unsuccessfully to bite down on him, he could feel the vibration of the sword lodging itself in the roof of the dragon's mouth, or clanging and grating against the edges of his teeth. Ichor like molten gold dripped down onto Hisoka. That, and the horror of staring down Kurikara's fiery gullet, pulled him from any last shadow of Kurikara's memories.

" _WHY-Y-Y-Y?!_ " It was Kurikara's desperate human voice Hisoka heard, splitting his head from eardrum to eardrum. " _Why can't I kill you?!_ This is all _his_ fault!" by whom Hisoka could feel he meant Rikugou.

But what did the Astrologer have to do with all this? Hisoka was the one who had been so determined to make Kurikara his.

With a decidedly un-dragon-like scream, Kurikara spat him out.

And Hisoka felt the breath knocked out of him as he hit the sand. That was also the moment Yatonokami chose to retreat back into the depths of Hisoka's soul. As if all the blood had drained from his head at once, the Sword of Night retracted itself with a snap, and cold vertigo rushed in to fill the void it left behind. The ground tilted around him until he thought he just might fall off the Earth, and it was all he could do not to be sick.

In that instant, the physical exertion of the fight caught up with Hisoka. Every part of him felt used, everything hurt. His skin burned, from Muraki's curse and Kurikara's _qi._ But nothing was worse than the ache in his head. The sword may have gone, but it felt like his skull was splitting wide open. Groaning, Hisoka pressed his hand to the spot, and tried to will the world to stop its spinning as he sat up.

"This can't be. . . ." a human-sized Kurikara muttered to himself as he curled his fists in the desert sand. "I swore I would never . . . never again . . ." He pushed himself to his feet. "I can't accept this outcome— _I won't accept it!_ "

And he charged at Hisoka, murder flashing in his eyes. His hands flexed, hungry for Hisoka's throat between them.

But at the last moment, he stopped. As though the same barrier was preventing him from laying a finger on Hisoka.

No. Not a barrier. It was the memory of having Hisoka in his mind that stayed his hand against everything in him that wanted to crush his defeat into the dust. Their eyes met across the all-too-short distance between them, and Kurikara knew what Hisoka knew. There was nothing in his heart, no painful memory, try though he might to bury deep inside himself, that Hisoka could not access with a simple touch.

And that terrified him.

A dragon of his awesome power, his near invincibility, and what frightened him was some human seeing into his true heart.

"It's over, Kurikara," Rikugou said as he joined them. "I'd say Kurosaki more than proved himself worthy of your might. Wouldn't you? You should show your new master the respect he _deserves._ "

His tone straddled the line between objective observation, and mocking. But the last bit was too much for Kurikara to abide. _"_ _You!_ " he turned on the Astrologer. "You knew all along this would happen! Didn't you, Rikugou! And Kijin too, no doubt. . . . And now you expect me to bow to this . . . this _monstrosity_?" he spat. "To humble myself, to grovel in the dust like a worm—for the likes of _him_? Well I won't do it! I _won't!_ "

And since he could not fight, he fled, running into the desert away from Hisoka and the rest of his court.

"Don't be too hard on him for this, Hisoka," Rikugou said as he watched him go. "These are all empty words—they don't mean anything. It practically goes against the laws of the universe for a dragon to admit when he's been bested."

He extended his arm, and Hisoka was glad for the help up. He was so drained of energy and pumped full of adrenaline that his legs wobbled under his weight. "All I care about is whether I'm going to be able to rely on him to come when I call."

By his hum, it seemed Rikugou had his own doubts about that as well.

"I _did_ win him, though. Didn't I?"

In the distance, Kurikara slowed his pace to a walk, the sleeves of his robe flapping indignantly with each stride. Surely he just needed some time to think about what had happened, Hisoka thought, some time to accept how things were going to be different and blow off steam.

Kurikara kicked a stone that was in his path, and sent it flying so far over the desert that Hisoka lost track of it before it could even start to come down. _Okay, maybe he needs a really long_ _time. . . ._

"I'd be careful not to phrase it that way around him, if I were you," Rikugou said as he watched Kurikara himself, his tone somber. "We're not prizes in some festival arcade booth, just waiting for the right someone to come along and toss a ring over a bottle."

 _I didn't mean it that way. . . ._ But Hisoka kept his rebuttal to himself. Clearly he still had much to learn about the shikigami he already had.

"Is it true, what he said?" Hisoka didn't bother to hide the edge in his own voice, as he recalled Kurikara's hurt. He still felt it in him, as though it were his own. It _was_ his own. "Did you really know this was how everything was going to turn out?"

"I can never know anything with absolute certainty. . . ." But Rikugou must have known it was futile to try to lie or stretch the truth with an empath. He tilted his head, avoiding Hisoka's glare. "But more or less."

"And you didn't think to _warn_ me before I threw myself at him like—like some sort of _sacrifice!_ "

Forget Kurikara: Was this relationship with Rikugou going to work out? For all the progress Hisoka had thought they were making, now it seemed he didn't know Rikugou half as well as he'd thought he had, just hours ago.

But the Astrologer just turned to him, and said what Hisoka already knew in his heart: "If I had, would you have done anything differently?"

"No, no, no—are you fucking kidding me with this?" said Kazuma as she ran up, Nonomiya and Kokushungei following a few steps behind. "Please tell me you didn't just win him! This is exactly what we were sent here to prevent!"

"Wait—when the hell did you two get here?" Hisoka started when he saw the two Peacekeepers. While Rikugou said, "Prevent? On whose orders?"

He must have thought they would say Sohryuu. But Kazuma huffed, "Our chief's. But I'm sure it comes from higher up. What good does it do anyone if the kid brings back another shiki he can't control and blows himself and half the Judgment Bureau up again?" The last part trailed off in an uncertain waver as she remembered it was Rikugou who had done the blowing-up in question.

Behind her, Kokushungei made her disagreement known with a snort. But she was grinning, as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Yeah, right. Just based on what I've experienced while in your world, I wouldn't be surprised if the Great King Enma was expecting something like this to happen all along."

While she left the rest to ponder the implications of that observation, she shot Hisoka a wink; and he couldn't help hearing shades of Terazuma when she said, "Glad to see you're still with us, kid."

Heaving a weary sigh, Nonomiya tossed her hands up in the air. "Okay, so what are we supposed to do now?"

* * *

It was no easy thing to track down information on the night he had died. That is, it was no easy thing if he chose to go through official channels. Imai's clearance level wasn't high enough to access the secret files, and the Gushoushin were particularly stodgy when it came to accepting bribes (though maybe it had more to do with the elder having already decided he didn't like Imai).

But the memories of other Peacekeepers who had been in Tokyo that night were another matter.

"It was Kurosaki that summoned it," one of them told him as he clandestinely pocketed Imai's money. Turned out Summons wasn't the only department with a penny-pinching secretary. "Kurosaki Hisoka. That teenage kid with the creepy green eyes, the one who works in Summons. Tsuzuki's partner—er, well, at least he _was_ Tsuzuki's partner _,_ when Tsuzuki was _here_. . . ."

"Summons. Kurosaki. Got it." And so the kid with the creepy eyes came back to haunt him _again._ The name Tsuzuki didn't mean nearly as much to Imai as it did to everyone else here, but he was beginning to get an impression of the guy based on reputation alone.

"So, what're you gonna do next?" his coworker asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "You gonna confront Kurosaki about it? Have it out with him?"

"Is that what you would recommend?" If this were the police force back in the Living World, confronting another officer about a personal beef could be grounds for disciplinary action. A stain on his record. Worse, it could compromise an investigation, and that in turn could mean justice did not get served.

However, as Imai's coworker reminded him, "He _did_ kill you, even if it was on accident. He killed a lot of people 'on accident' that night, even obliterated two of our own agents. You're the only one caught in the blast that's still around, and if I were in your shoes, I'd want some answers. Justice, even. An apology at very least." The guy shrugged. "But it's your life, Imai. What do _you_ feel it was worth?"

* * *

 **Author's note:** _As in Gone to Earth, credit for inspiration for this version of Kokushungei goes to Eria, in particular the portrayal of Kokushungei as a woman in human form in the A Skein of Afterlives series._

 _The description of how Yatonokami manifests when Hisoka summons/activates him is inspired by different versions of Yatonokami depicted in the Megami Tensei VGs. I know Chinese dragons don't traditionally have wings, but as per Sohryuu's depiction in the manga, I gave Kurikara some to match._

 _Mythology is a fuzzy thing. The actual Kurikara is both a dragon and the avatar of a holy sword. (This is mentioned in the manga at one point, too, by the tengu, but it isn't elaborated on much.) I've tried to weave that in with Yatonokami being both a god/guardian of the Sword of Night (the Yato) and the avatar of the Yato itself, whatever that is. There will be more along those lines in the next Hisoka chapter, and hopefully it will make a little more sense then. . . ._

 _The catalpa bow is a reference to the Azusa-Yumi, a holy artifact associated with Shinto shrines. In reality there are many of them, but I wanted to evoke one specific weapon that would have legendary status (and implications) in the world of Gensoukai. So that's what that's about._


	23. No surrender

The pursuit of information, like any other business, was all about whom one knew. Money could only get one so far. But a valued service, or the threat of a secret gained from it, could unlock doors that no amount of palm-greasing could.

There were just enough higher-ups in the NPSC who were familiar with the Mibu name, and that of the Kokakurou, to point him to the appropriate persons to answer his questions, and remove any barriers that stood in his way.

"The official story is that an underground gas line exploded," a woman named Nagai told Oriya over the phone, as he sat comfortably in his Tokyo hotel room. "However, we have witnesses in law enforcement who recall seeing what looked like a small nuclear explosion over that part of the city. Unfortunately, at this time we can confirm neither as the cause of the accident."

"But if some sort of nuclear device _were_ responsible, the implications would be dire. There would be questions regarding terrorism and long-term environmental impacts that the government would not be able to simply sweep under the rug, as they've been doing so far." Which was why, no matter what he was told, Oriya could not believe the event had been the result of nuclear weapons.

At least, not any of this world.

By her long pause, it seemed Nagai's thinking was along similar lines. "You see the nature of my predicament, Mr. Mibu. I hate to admit it, but we are at a bit of a loss."

"Is there any word on what happened to a woman named Sakuraiji Ukyou? A Dr. Sakuraiji Ukyou?" It took a great effort for Oriya to sound objective and emotionally uninvolved as he said: "It appears the epicenter of the blast was directly in front of her house, and I was told her remains were never recovered. Do investigators have any reason to believe she was home at the time of the incident? Or, that she was involved in the explosion in any way?"

Based on what he had heard so far, Oriya expected an automatic denial. He was surprised when his question was greeted with an awkward silence on the other end of the line.

"We don't have any information on Dr. Sakuraiji's whereabouts at the time or since," Nagai said slowly and quietly when she spoke again. "As to the question of her connection . . .

"Let me be frank, Mr. Mibu. I know you've been cleared by my superiors, and I've been instructed to answer your questions fully, but I have deep reservations about doing so. There is so much about this case that we still don't know. I feel it would be irresponsible of me to share speculation with a civilian, even one of your standing. Do you understand that much of what I can tell you is hearsay, and therefore inadmissible in a court of law? Furthermore, I would feel it incumbent upon me to take legal action against you if any of our discussion were leaked to the press, and I believe neither you nor my superiors want that kind of publicity."

Oriya assured her, for what felt like the dozenth time that afternoon, that he had no intention of repeating anything he heard.

Despite her reservations, however, Nagai was under orders. And if Oriya were honest with himself, he had to admit he was deeply rattled though only mildly surprised when she told him: "We have reason to believe that a Dr. Muraki was somehow involved."

Oriya's heart raced just at her mention of that name, like a dog salivating at a bell. But he managed to keep an even tone of voice: "Involved how? Reports are he died in a fire five years ago. If you mean he was somehow responsible from beyond the grave. . . ."

Nagai laughed at that.

Though it was the laugh of someone who felt they might be going mad. "No, Muraki's definitely not deceased, Mr. Mibu. Or, at least, he wasn't before the night in question. Would it surprise you to learn he was seen in no fewer than two places, in two different cities, at the exact same time on the night of the explosion?"

It could have been a spirit, was the excuse that leaped to Oriya's mind, or some supernatural creature playing a mean trick; but how would that have sounded to an officer of the law? "Are you certain? How is that even possible?"

"Please, don't ask," Nagai chuckled bitterly. "I can't explain it to myself, and I'm not sure I'd even want to know the truth. Suffice it to say, we are certain now that at least one of the sightings was false. A lookalike was employed, we suspect by Dr. Muraki himself, to make us believe we had him in custody and retract our all-points bulletin from the ports. We thought he would try to flee Japan to avoid questioning, but as it turned out, he was actually already on the outside, trying to get back _in._ "

"Let me guess," Oriya said. "After the night in question, you learned he'd left a trail of bodies in other countries for you to follow."

That earned him a frosty: "You have some involvement with these people that I should know about? Come to think of it, I seem to remember the name of _your_ establishment coming up in my own investigation."

Not for the first time did Oriya feel like he was being judged to be of the same moral iniquity as Muraki, simply by association with him. Surely being the owner of an infamous high-class brothel didn't help matters. The assumption tended to be that any man or woman willingly involved in that trade must have compromised their morals to some degree, and Oriya would not have been able to say that the assumption was entirely false.

But he assured Nagai that he was not involved in Muraki's suspicious-death spree. The only contacts of Muraki's that he knew by name or face were those who were also his clients, and most of them occupied high places in public office or business. Muraki had always been meticulous about separating his colleagues from his friends—and his colleagues from one another—for just this reason. "I merely know that man well enough to guess how he might act. I was tipped off about one of the victims a few months ago. She was an old friend of the family. The report included nothing to suggest foul play, I didn't even know at that point that Muraki might still be alive—"

"You just knew he was somehow involved. Because, as I understand it, you two go way back?"

"That's correct."

There was a long exhale on the other end, as Nagai debated with herself whether to believe him. She must have concluded that she had no choice, as she went on, "As for the other sighting, it can neither be confirmed nor denied. I will say that there were detectives outside Sakuraiji's house that night who claimed to see a man matching Muraki's description entering the front gate. I'm sure I don't need to tell you his appearance is rather unique."

"He's not likely to be mistaken for anyone else," Oriya agreed.

"True. But unfortunately, I can't corroborate their statements. Only one of the detectives made it through that night alive, and the last I heard from his department is he's undergoing psychiatric evaluation for post-traumatic stress. I doubt they'll let him speak to you about this, no matter whom you blackmail.

"So I'm sorry, Mr. Mibu. I wish I could give you something solid to go on where Dr. Sakuraiji is concerned, but I've given you all the information I have."

* * *

Consciousness filtered in slowly. Bright light forcing his eyes open, forming white toruses in his blurry vision.

It wasn't the first morning Tsuzuki had woken feeling heavy and sated. And used. The last few nights had been surreal, almost dreamlike. And though the well-aged Scotch Muraki had shared with him had been only partly to blame, Tsuzuki knew his limits and was certain he hadn't overindulged. If he had, he would have woken with a headache to testify to it.

And the sex would not have remained so fresh in his mind. Fresher than he would have liked in the clarity of morning, when there was nothing to distract him from his regret and self-disgust, and no dark corners to hide his guilt in. No matter how he told himself not to feel anything, he couldn't help it. The more he denied needing Muraki's touch, the more willfully his body betrayed him. Once he'd opened that door, even if he had done so out of spite, he could not seem to close it again. Under Muraki's touch, under his mouth _—_

 _—_ _moving up the inside of his thigh, lips pressing so lightly against the sensitive swath above his knee that it sent a shiver shooting up his body. He managed to bite down on his gasp—but couldn't quite catch the lift of his hips, which only encouraged Muraki to pull him closer. His backside rested against Muraki's thighs, his own legs resting at immodest angles. . . ._

Move, damn it _, he tried to tell himself._ Fight this! _But his head felt heavy as an anchor against the wrinkled sheets, his hands unresponsive beside it as he watched Muraki over the length of his own naked body. Snow-white hands that had no business being as warm or as familiar as they were caressed and explored him, made his nerves sing, and Tsuzuki was forced to admit to himself the uncomfortable truth: that it wasn't that he_ couldn't _move, but that he didn't_ want _to. . . ._

His hands curled into weak fists in the sheets as he willed himself to wipe the memory of the night before from his mind, or bury it so deep he might fool himself into thinking he had forgotten it. But these attempts at self-castigation were becoming ever more ridiculous as one night's indulgence bled into the next. Never mind that Muraki was a consummate giver of pleasure. As much as Tsuzuki loathed himself for succumbing, he couldn't pretend he wasn't affected, or that he didn't want to see each decadent torture Muraki devised for him to its end. It was only after he reached the end . . .

He was missing time. There was no other way to explain it. It was more than just exerting himself to exhaustion. There had to be something else going on, making Tsuzuki feel as though there were days he couldn't account for, and moments that refused to adhere to any sort of chronological order. He'd see flashes of Muraki in his memory—over drinks or over Tsuzuki, or standing in a doorway—see his lips move and form words, and hear his muffled voice, as though he were speaking through water, yet not be able to recall what on earth they had talked about.

 _He's drugging me again. Because I'm getting close to figuring this all out. That has to be it._

Either that, or Tsuzuki had been here so long he was genuinely starting to lose his will to fight. And neither one of those possibilities was better than the other. He had to get out, before he stopped minding altogether that he was being kept here like a pet in a cage.

He spent the mornings alone, as ever. Made his way to the dining room, where breakfast was waiting, still hot. Tsuzuki's stomach growled at the aroma of it, pleading to be filled, but the thought of eating something that might be laced had a tendency to quell one's hunger. What good would eating do a creature like him anyway? Each day here was the same as the next, repeating the same motions over and over and over. . . .

And lately, examining every room in his prison all over again for any structural weakness or hidden passageway he might have missed the first or dozenth time around. The library for moving bookcases, the fireplaces and their mantles for secret doors. The windows remained as opaque and unbreakable as ever. More and more Tsuzuki was convinced Muraki entered the apartment by some sort of teleportation, tuned by some combination of spells that only he was able to penetrate. If that were the case, maybe Tsuzuki should have been concentrating more on getting Muraki drunk, or trying to seduce the secret out of him. He already knew violence or the threat of death wouldn't work.

There was one corner of his prison he hadn't examined quite as thoroughly, though it was with good reason. The operating room where Muraki had strapped him down and sliced him open was on that end, and, seeing as Tsuzuki had found no other need for it, he had avoided that room and its end of the hallway like the two were a snake in his path. It was only with great reluctance that he resolved to make an intensive study of it as well.

After just half an hour of doing so, however, the only result was that Tsuzuki now felt he had an even keener grasp of the depths of Muraki's depravity. There may not have been any actual skeletons in the cabinet, but the varieties of restraints Tsuzuki did have to push through to examine the back of it for hidden doors would have made the Count envious.

 _So. No exit there either. To Chijou or Narnia or otherwise._

Heaving a deep breath as he leaned against the outer wall of the room, Tsuzuki felt what hope he had managed to muster up that morning fade. All that time spent in that vile room, for nothing. He shut his eyes as the memory of that day resurfaced, bringing with the pain and humiliation a fresh wave of nausea.

Or was it the knowledge of how far he had fallen since that day? It couldn't have been as long ago as it felt. He had vowed then that he would never give himself willingly to Muraki. Christ, how short "never" had turned out to be. . . .

Feeling the dizziness pass, Tsuzuki opened his eyes—

And did an actual double-take. _That can't be right. . . ._

Yet there, in the wall across from him, staring at him through the wallpaper and the plaster beneath, was the faint but unmistakable outline of a doorway. Finding it hard to believe his own eyes, Tsuzuki ran his hand over the perturbation. It was slight. The patching had been executed professionally. Even the wallpaper seemed to have been carefully aged in an attempt to match the original. If not for the angle of the sunlight coming in through the room behind him, illuminating the differences, he might never have known it was there at all.

God damn it! That doorway had been there all along, and he had never noticed it!

Tsuzuki slammed his fist into the plaster, ignoring the pain as his knuckles bit into wood. He managed to crack the plaster enough that he could pry some of the bloodied pieces away.

And saw beneath a wooden jamb. And inside it, a door.

Tsuzuki laughed. Of all the surprises he'd been subjected to these last few months, finally one of them was good. He only prayed the door led to somewhere _other_ than this apartment. He couldn't afford to get his hopes up too much, just in case the only thing he found behind it was another useless room.

But one thing at a time. First he had to uncover this door. And though he could punch at it until he broke every bone in his hand several times over, the work would go a lot faster if he could find a pry bar.

* * *

"I'm glad you were able to meet with me, Mr. Mibu." The young man named Miyake managed to keep the unflappably optimistic smile on his face even as he said, "We're really beginning to worry about Dr. Sakuraiji. It isn't typical of her to take such a long vacation, let alone without any word about where she might be headed or how to reach her. The only person around here who she told _anything_ about it to was Dr. Akiyama, and after she committed suicide—"

Oriya held up a hand. "Excuse me, Dr. Miyake—"

"Er, it's not 'Doctor' yet, I'm afraid. I'm still in the process of submitting my thesis. Another reason I wish I knew how to reach Dr. Sakuraiji. Her feedback has been invaluable to me."

None of which mattered to Oriya one whit. "Mr. Miyake, then," he said, forcing himself to be patient. "You'll have to forgive me. I'm not familiar with Dr. Akiyama at all." Though this talk of suicide was troubling, and probably not the most appropriate line of discussion for the cafe full of university students and housewives with young children where they had agreed to meet. "But this is the first I've heard of Ukyou taking an extended vacation."

Miyake's brows went up behind his glasses, his mouth making a little "o" of surprise. "You said you were an old colleague of Sensei's? From Kyoto?"

"That's right. I never pursued medicine the way she did, though. We went our separate ways professionally long ago, but we have stayed close in spirit."

"Sensei usually goes to Kyoto on vacation—er, when she _does_ go on vacation. She can stay in the labs twenty-four-seven when she's making serious headway on her project. We used to worry the lack of sleep was going to put her in the hospital one of these days, but she seems to thrive on it. Uh," Miyake must have realized he was wandering off on tangents, and corrected his course: "when you said over the phone you two had been friends since university, I kind of assumed you were the one she was going up to visit."

The kid was clever, Oriya had to hand him that. The kind of quick mind for solving puzzles that the Ukyou he knew would be eager to recruit. Without the mercurial temperament prone to melancholy to go along with it, like that of their old mutual friend.

"I haven't heard from her in months," Oriya hated to confirm. "I wish I could say that she _had_ come to see me—"

"But then you wouldn't be here asking after her, if that were the case," Miyake nodded solemnly to himself.

The implications of this line of discussion were growing too dark for Oriya's comfort. And outside, the clouds from the last rainstorm were giving way to blue sky. He folded his arms against an unseasonable chill. "Tell me about this other colleague of yours. This Dr. Akiyama, was it? You say Ukyou told her where she was going?"

"Mm." Miyake nodded. "At least, that's what Dr. Akiyama told us. She told us Dr. Sakuraiji had been called away suddenly on a top secret assignment and that she was leaving the project in Akiyama's charge until her return." He scrunched his brows. "Now that I say it out loud, I realize how suspicious that sounds. But, believe it or not, it wouldn't be the first time that happened. The nature of Sensei's work means she's often called in to meet with government officials or big medical firms. I can't go into details beyond that, proprietary information and whatnot—though, if you two are such close friends, you probably know a bit about the sorts of things she was working on."

Oriya couldn't help a small, lopsided smile. He wondered if Miyake had ever seen the everblooming cherry trees the company he worked for had developed. Granted, the line of designer plants had been a short one, and the clientele extremely selective; it may have been before Miyake's time and above his pay grade; but Oriya did not doubt, given the glowing tones in which he spoke of his "Sensei," that Miyake would be awed if he could see the beauty Ukyou's earlier work had wrought.

"The weird thing about this time," Miyake went on, as if suddenly remembering, "is that we'd finally made the breakthrough Sensei had been hoping for. So it surprised me that she would leave so soon after, rather than staying to document the progress and run new trials.

"And then, one day, about a month after she left, all our research just vanished. Literally overnight. Some men in uniform came and removed it all from the building, and all of us arrived for work the next morning to an office empty of just about everything but the potted plants. I joke, but it was eerie. Even the mice and rabbits had been taken. I'm guessing they were agents sent from the government, though Dr. Akiyama said something about shinigami when she called me about it."

Oriya had found his attention starting to wane, as more and more his own worries and theories fought for supremacy in his thoughts.

But when Miyake said "shinigami," he started back to the present. "Shinigami doesn't sound like something a doctor of medicine would put much stock in. Do you think she was speaking figuratively?"

"That's what I thought, too!" Miyake's eyes went wide behind his glasses. "I asked her about it, but she sure seemed adamant that _actual_ shinigami had stolen our research. Now, I know rational people like you and me don't believe in things like that," the young man said in a conspiratorial whisper, "and, honestly, I didn't think Dr. Akiyama did either. But something made a believer out of her that night. Something spooked her. Enough to make her jump in front of a train the next day? I don't know. I can't know what was going through her head. All I know is, she sounded rattled, and desperate. People do things they wouldn't otherwise when they're desperate, and not thinking straight. . . ."

Miyake went to take a sip of his coffee, and as he did so, some missing piece of the puzzle must have finally dropped into place. "You don't think these so-called shinigami had anything to do with Dr. Sakuraiji's disappearance, do you? Or maybe Dr. Akiyama was responsible in some way, and all that stuff about Sensei going on vacation was just to cover her own butt? What if she knew the authorities were on to her, and she killed herself out of guilt before they could arrest her and discredit her research!"

"I doubt it's anything as dramatic as that," Oriya was quick to reassure him, though his own theories were not so far off. Doubtless this Dr. Akiyama was connected in some way to whatever had happened to Ukyou, and the shinigami that had inspired such panic in her were real. Though Miyake did not need to know just how real they were. "Knowing Ukyou as I do, if she went away in such a hurry, it was because she didn't want to be contacted."

Yet, whatever he might tell Miyake to ease his nerves, Oriya couldn't force himself to believe his own line. If Ukyou hadn't made any attempt to contact her employees in all the time she had been missing, it was most likely because she couldn't. And all he could do was pray that the reason she couldn't was not that she was dead. _If she were dead, I would feel it._

At least, that was what he told himself. One had to have hope, if he were to keep searching.

The phone in his jacket pocket started to vibrate. Oriya retrieved it, and upon seeing the number, told Miyake by way of apology, "I need to take this."

"Sure," Miyake said as he jumped up from his seat, and offered his hand to Oriya. "And good luck. I really hope you find her."

* * *

It wasn't easy, or quiet, but Tsuzuki managed to break open the door hidden and sealed behind the plaster. Muraki wouldn't be pleased when he found the mess left behind—which included the ugly hole where the brass wall sconce had been, before Tsuzuki ripped it out as his tool of choice for demolition—but with any luck he would be far from here before the doctor came home.

That sconce he now held at the ready as a weapon. It made Tsuzuki uneasy that _no one_ came running at the noise he made. Which surprised him almost as much as the narrow, spiraling servants' staircase that the door revealed. Aged varnish filled his senses. A creak of the stair beneath Tsuzuki's foot made him pause in mid-step. And listen. If there was someone here with him, someone close enough to hear the creak, it wouldn't be long before he heard their footsteps coming to investigate, or saw their face appear at the bottom of the stairs.

But seconds went by, minutes, and no one came. It was hard to believe—he didn't think Muraki would be so careless as to leave him without some sort of guard—but it was possible that Tsuzuki was in this house all by himself.

Still, knowing that he might meet resistance at any moment, he resumed his descent with the utmost caution, easing his weight gently onto each stair. Holding the sconce at the level of his eyes, just in case of trouble.

The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee edged out the varnish the closer Tsuzuki got to the landing. Beyond the butler's pantry the staircase ended in, he could see an European cottage-style kitchen, dark as twilight despite the light of noon streaming into the floor above. Surely there would be a door at the back of it, or else close by. Escape could be only steps away.

But before Tsuzuki could take one step outside the pantry, a silver arc, flashing across his vision, made him leap back.

The next moment, stinging pain lashed across his midsection. He hissed, felt the warm trickle of blood beneath his shirt. It couldn't have been too deep, but it was shocking enough. And the old man in the suit who had dealt it would not allow Tsuzuki to dwell on his wounds any further. He jabbed at Tsuzuki with a kitchen knife nearly as long as his forearm, and it was all Tsuzuki could do to dodge its point. What he wouldn't have given to have some fuda at hand right about now.

"Wait-wait-wait!" he tried to reason with the man, but he wouldn't hear. He slashed again, and Tsuzuki managed to hook the blade in the crook of the sconce, and deflect it. "This is a big misunderstanding, I'm not a burglar! I was being held prisoner upstairs, I only just escaped. Please, you have to believe me. Help me get out of here!"

"I know exactly who you are, Mr. Shinigami," the old man said. And with that last word, what hope Tsuzuki had had that he might find an easy way out of this vanished.

Yet the man was polite to a fault as he said, "And I regret that I cannot allow you to leave. My master's wish is that you remain here until he determines otherwise, and I shall do everything in my power to ensure his will is carried out!"

The last the man growled out as he lunged at Tsuzuki again. The knife's edge sliced into Tsuzuki's arm as he raised it to defend himself, stumbling back into pantry doors that gave just enough beneath his weight to throw him off balance. He raised the sconce in his other hand, only to have it kicked out of his grip. Tsuzuki dove for an exit, before he could be impaled by that wicked knife, but felt the man right behind him, and turned just in time to parry a salvo of blows.

 _Jesus, who is this guy?_ If Tsuzuki had to guess, he would put the man somewhere in his late-sixties, but he moved like he was half that age. There was something familiar about his fighting style, too, a fluid combination of elements of different hand-to-hand and bladed weapon techniques. _Is this where Muraki gets it from? His butler?_

Whichever the case, Tsuzuki's only concern in that moment was staying in one piece long enough to escape. He wanted to turn and run for all he was worth, but he had no idea which way to go. And the old man was dishing out more than enough to keep Tsuzuki occupied, just trying to dodge that blade. He wasn't about to grant Tsuzuki a single moment in which to orient himself.

This was one time Tsuzuki could not afford to be incapacitated. He may not have been facing down monsters or demons, but he knew that if he allowed himself to be captured now, in the middle of an attempted escape, he might never get out. If he were in Muraki's position, Tsuzuki wouldn't even trust himself to have free reign of his apartment prison again. And eight years was long enough to spend chained to a bed for any lifetime, even his.

* * *

"Is that what those robots over at the National Police told you?" said Councillor Oda, whose lawyer Oriya had been trying to learn the true fate of ever since his phone conversation with Ms. Nagai.

"Why? What story did you hear?"

"Muraki was there that night, alright," the Councillor grumbled. "Got picked up coming in on a flight to Narita. Usually he can come to an understanding with law enforcement to drop whatever investigation they bring him in on, and that's why I sent my attorney. To make sure a quick end was put to the whole thing. But that night Muraki wasn't playing the game the way he was supposed to. He starts talking like he's going to confess to something, then, all of a sudden, he slams my attorney's head into the interrogation room table with enough force to cave his face in. Next thing I hear, officers are claiming some huge, winged devil-man is wreaking havoc inside the station."

"A devil-man? That doesn't sound like Muraki." But it did sound like something he would be involved in, if Oriya knew Muraki half as well as he thought he did. Mentally, he cursed his old friend. How many people did he have to rope into his schemes, who, though they may not have been innocent, never asked to play a part?

"Well, the man's a devil, for sure," Oda spat. "But there's something fishy about the whole thing. A few hours later, the Commissioner retracts the statement, saying it was a case of mistaken identity, coupled with some sort of mass hallucination. Some guy hopped up on psychoactive drugs who merely looked identical to Muraki in every way." That got a derisive laugh out the Diet member. "Of course, if you know Muraki as well as I do, you know there's no way in hell they could have arrested the wrong guy."

Sure. Oriya had been hearing the same thing ever since he began looking into Ukyou's disappearance: No one could have mistaken Muraki's identity, even when they claimed to see him in two places at once, because there was no one else who looked quite like him.

But that still didn't mean he was _alive_. If his run-in with shinigami had taught Oriya anything, it was that one's life, for lack of a better term, did not end with death. If the souls of the dead could be granted physical bodies by one supernatural source, what was to say another could not do the same thing? For that matter, what was to say Enma himself—if he truly existed—had not sent Muraki back from whatever hell he had landed in after the university fire five years ago?

Still, it had to be said: "Surely you must have heard as I did, Councillor, that Muraki died in an accident—"

"Bull. Shit. Er, if you'll pardon my language. . . ." (It seemed running an historic establishment like the Kokakurou left his clientele with an impression that Oriya could not handle crude language or modern slang; but he could have reminded them that he encountered much worse in the day-to-day operations of a brothel.) "But I know for a fact Muraki didn't die in that fire."

"You have proof?" Oriya said, grateful the sudden racing of his heart wouldn't be noticeable over the cell phone.

"The good doctor set me up with a new liver just last year. Had to go all the way to America to get it, cost me a small fortune, too, but I'd say the trip was well worth the trouble. You ever been on an Alaskan cruise, Mr. Mibu?"

Oriya could not say he had had the pleasure.

"All the wild salmon and king crab you can eat. And not a waiting list in sight."

Yes, Oriya was very glad they were having this conversation by phone. Or else the Councillor, who happened to be one of his clients as well, might have guessed from his clenched jaw and nervous energy how thoroughly Oriya despised him. Keeping his tone cordial was like a game, and Oriya was determined to win it, though it pained him. "And you saw Muraki with your own eyes on this trip?"

"He performed the surgery. Bastard's face was the last thing I saw before he put me under. I told him if I died on the operating table, I would sue his ass into the ground from beyond the grave."

"And you wonder why he killed your lawyer."

Oriya hadn't meant it as a joke, but the Councillor got a hearty laugh out of that anyway, muttering some comment about the guy being a pompous asshole. "My attorney, I meant, but I guess the shoe fits either way. Still, he did a hell of a job, while he lived. He's not going to be easy to replace."

"Unlike a liver."

The comment wasn't supposed to slip out, but Oriya needn't have worried. That got just as big a laugh out of the politician as his other non-joke. "I like you, Mibu," Oda said. "You've always treated me well in the past. Why don't I return the favor? Let me give you the number Muraki gave me. You won't reach him directly. But if you want to get in contact with him, prove to yourself he's still alive, that's the best place to start. And when you see him— _if_ you see him—tell that bastard he owes me a new lawyer."

* * *

With the dining room table standing between him and his doom for the moment, Tsuzuki finally was allowed a chance to catch his breath.

And felt a wave of dizziness and stabbing pain below his ribs as he breathed in. He put his hand to the cut to his abdomen. It was healing, sealing itself back up, but the pain was on the inside of the wound. And spreading. Like wildfire.

Tsuzuki cursed through his teeth. Poison. Had to be. Not the stuff Muraki had tortured him with, thank God, but still enough to slow him down, once it got into his bloodstream.

Not that his attacker seemed to need the advantage. He may have chased Tsuzuki throughout this labyrinth of a house, kicking and jabbing and raining blow after blow upon Tsuzuki, but he barely broke a sweat.

"I suspect you're feeling the effects of the paralytic agent," the man said, noticing Tsuzuki's trouble. "It's a unique blend I created for just this likelihood. Rapidly absorbing, fast-acting, slow to metabolize out of the system—ideal for use on a being such as yourself. You'll have to forgive the underhanded tactics, Mr. Tsuzuki, but, as you can see, we don't all have the pleasure of an eternally youthful body, and I myself have a particular dislike of failure."

"You know my name?"

"Unfortunately, I know all too much about you. For example, how you already drove two Murakis to their graves. You won't get a third, if I have anything to say about it."

Two Murakis? He must have meant the father and grandfather. So Kazutaka wasn't the only one the old man had worked for. It was no wonder then that he spoke to Tsuzuki like he knew him from long ago—like Tsuzuki wronged him long ago.

Yet, other than that, Tsuzuki knew nothing about this man, not even his name. Another disadvantage the man had him at. "I'm not going to surrender," Tsuzuki muttered through the pain. "You want to keep me here, you're going to have to kill me. And you're going to need a lot more than poison to do it."

Sakaki hummed at that. He was losing patience with this childish game of trying to pursue Tsuzuki around the dining table. It felt beneath him. Or maybe it was that Tsuzuki knew just how difficult it made him to catch that irked Sakaki so. "Or I can simply bide my time and wait for the agent to take its full effect," he told the shinigami calmly. "It's probably reaching your heart as we speak, making it race, misfire, even as it robs your extremities of control. . . ."

Impossible, Tsuzuki thought. He couldn't really know that. But it seemed at the old man's words his heart fluttered like a bird beating against the bars of its cage. Leaving him short of breath, weak in the limbs. Spots across his vision—

 _Don't listen to him. It's psychosomatic. Listening will only make it worse. Muraki said you can push through any poison if you really want to. That was the whole point of your training. Ignore the symptoms. You're a shinigami, for crying out loud!_

Tsuzuki staggered, reaching out for the nearest chair for support. It was Sakaki's cue to move around the end of the table. Cautiously he approached, as if it were a tranquilized tiger before him, rather than a man.

But then, it never had been a man, his quarry. He could not allow himself to even think of it as a "he," after witnessing what his obsession had done to Yukitaka, what it had made him. After witnessing what that accursed blood had turned the gentle boy he had sworn to protect into. Sakaki might have said even he had been sucked into Tsuzuki's event horizon, if he could fool himself into believing he had been some purer sort of character before he threw his lot in with the Murakis.

But even had he had any regrets, he could not go back and change the past. All he could do now was his part, and hope he might convince Kazutaka once and for all that this nonsense had gone on quite long enough. But first, his master had to be made to understand just how false the trust he placed in this shinigami was.

The blood pounding in Tsuzuki's ears was deafening. He tried to shake it away, but only succeeded in feeling more unsteady on his feet. He saw the old man coming toward him, and knew if he had to rely on his reflexes to defend himself he was finished.

But the energy inside him didn't care whether he was poisoned. He let the pulse burst from his core, pushing the heavy wooden table and its chairs across the room, and shattering every piece of crystal nearby. Sakaki was lifted up like a doll and thrown back against the far wall, the knife knocked out of his grip on impact—

And that was Tsuzuki's chance. He knew he wasn't going to get another one. Despite his racing heart, despite the walls and doorways tipping at impossible angles before him, he ran toward where the front door had to be. Feeling like a pachinko ball, ricocheting off jambs as he stumbled through one room trapped in another time after another, knowing he had to reach the exit eventually. Turning a corner, he had it in his sights—

When the report of a rifle echoed through the house, and blinding pain in the back of Tsuzuki's thigh sent him falling headlong. He grasped for anything to keep him upright, but the only thing within reach was a floor lamp that went down along with him, its stained-glass shade shattering under his weight.

The jagged pieces cut into Tsuzuki as he scrabbled to push himself up off the floor. But his wounded leg wouldn't hold his weight, not even when he got himself onto his knees. He couldn't see the wound, but he could feel it as he gingerly turned himself around, and the extent of the ruined flesh. It might take a few minutes to heal from something like that.

Minutes he didn't have, as he saw Muraki's man approach, the rifle, barrel still smoking, leveled at Tsuzuki's chest, and ready to end him should Tsuzuki so much as twitch wrong.

"I know you'll just come back to life if I kill you," the man said, his words and the barrel of the gun seeming to waver in Tsuzuki's perception as the pain and poison did their work. "But I'd rather not have to do this the hard way. Killing you will just leave me a bigger mess to clean up."

In his delirium, Tsuzuki couldn't help a laugh. What did he call all this, if not hard?

 _I'm not going. I'm not going back._ If Muraki's man wanted Tsuzuki back in that apartment, he was going to have to drag Tsuzuki's corpse there himself. Defiance curled his hand into a fist—and he found within it a shard of glass from the broken shade, long and pointy—

"Last chance, Mr. Tsuzuki—"

"Alright."

Slowly, gritting his teeth as any weight seemed to only worsen the damage to his leg, Tsuzuki managed to hoist himself to his feet. Entirely aware of the gun still pointing at his heart, but not concerned. As the man had said, he would only come back if he were shot.

"Hands where I can see them," Sakaki told him.

But Tsuzuki didn't intend to do anything of the sort. He lunged, just as the gun went off. Too late. The shot tore through his shoulder, but missed anything vital. Though the same could not be said for Tsuzuki's shard of glass.

It was always the same. Like cutting into some soft fruit, the hard part was breaking through the tension of the skin. But once that barrier was penetrated . . .

He could feel the man stiffen against his knuckles, knew the instinctual, animal fear of breathing in, as though one could stop the reality of vital damage and the pain that came with it if one simply refused to breathe. But he would not stop. A wound to the gut, no matter how deep the laceration, would not be enough to deter a man as loyal as him from his mission.

So Tsuzuki pulled out the shard and plunged it back in again. And again. And again. He couldn't be sure how many times exactly. Just repeat until he felt like his message got through, and the gun at last dropped to the floor. "I'm sorry," Tsuzuki hissed, "but I told you, I'm not going back."

The man sagged against Tsuzuki, grabbing feebly for him for support. His hands crawled toward Tsuzuki's throat, even as his blood spilled out into Tsuzuki's hands. It was like a nightmare. It _was_ one of his nightmares: the accusing dead, reaching for him, refusing to stay buried.

Feeling panic rise in him, Tsuzuki tore himself out of the man's grip. The old man fell to his hands and knees as though in slow motion—or maybe it was just Tsuzuki's own swimming vision—but Tsuzuki didn't wait around to see if he would pick up the gun again. Though his wounded leg shot jolts of pain up his spine with every step, he staggered to the door, somehow fumbled the locks open, and all but fell out on to the step. Assailed by the drone of insects and distant traffic, and abraded by the fresh air.

Despite the natural light that had filtered into the apartment, the full strength of the summer sunlight was blinding after his incarceration. Tsuzuki had to shut his eyes, tried to shield them enough to open them again; but it was useless. The sun streamed daggers straight into his brain, to not just blind but deafen him, disorient him. Making him trip as he stepped off the doorstep and fall to the ground. Gravel bit into his knees through his trousers, and into the palms of his hands.

When Tsuzuki was able to open his eyes a little, it was the blood on those hands that greeted him, smearing on the white gravel walk. The sound of city traffic on a nearby street slowly overwhelmed the pounding of his own heart. He looked up to follow it, and saw a cottage garden filled with roses. Like he was back at Yukitaka's clinic, all over again. . . .

No, those had been pink and yellow. These were a wine-dark red, arterial red, almost black in the full sun, and the size of saucers. Like the ones that Muraki had been leaving in his room—

 _Muraki. So this is where you were keeping me, all this time. . . . All this time, and I was so close. . . ._

Tears of frustration and relief threatened. But he had to leave. Now, before Muraki came home. Or he would never get away.

He had to find a place to hide, to nurse his wounds and clean himself up, and try to figure out what it was he had just done.

Just like he'd been doing ever since he was a child.

* * *

The phone number Oda had given him went unanswered when Oriya tried to call.

But it did lead him to a house, one which looked just like Oriya imagined one belonging to Muraki Yukitaka would, given what tales he had heard about the man from Kazutaka. A grand manor that would have fit some European countryside better than a neighborhood of Tokyo, with a stone brick facade, painted shutters around all the windows, an immaculately tended English garden.

It was just the sort of place that would appeal to Kazutaka's aesthetic. And, for that reason, Oriya kicked himself that he did not think of the place sooner. He should have remembered their conversations from their university days, how Muraki had bitched and moaned about having to pay taxes and upkeep on the place that he had inherited. Yet every time Oriya had suggested selling it, or leasing it out to tenants, his friend would become overly defensive. As though Oriya had suggested he burn it to the ground. Or piss on his grandfather's gravestone, for that matter.

Despite its well-maintained appearance, however, Oriya had no way of telling if the house was currently occupied. Or, for that matter, who might be living there. But he had to try. If it was not someone currently connected to Muraki, then perhaps he would at least find someone who might give him some clue as to where his old friend had gone.

Or confirm that he was truly dead, and that all these other supposed sightings had been nothing but pranks or misunderstandings all along.

He rang the buzzer at the gate, and crushed his cigarette out on the sidewalk beneath his shoe while he waited for an answer.

And as he waited, and studied the house over the top of the gate, Oriya noticed that the front door was open. Just enough that the shadow over the entryway hadn't allowed Oriya to see it right away. The more he studied it, the more certain he was the door had been left cracked, by about the width of a human foot.

If Oriya knew anything about Muraki, it was that his old friend would never be so careless. Oriya rushed to the stoop. Disturbed by the sight of what looked like blood on the gravel walk, he let himself in.

And found the body of a man with silver hair lying face-down on the landing, his cracked glasses beside him.

Only for a second did Oriya fear it was Kazutaka. But he recognized his friend's butler from their days in university. He hurried to Sakaki's side, feeling for a pulse and, when he found one, carefully turned the man over.

"Shit. . . ."

Blood was everywhere. Soaking Sakaki's once-white shirt until it was almost black and making it impossible for Oriya to see where it was all coming from, or from how many wounds. It pooled on the floor beneath Sakaki and led a smeared trail down the hallway. He must have crawled toward the front door before he lost consciousness—but to call for help, or to pursue his attacker? How long he had been lying there, Oriya could only guess, but surely whoever—or whatever—had done this was long gone by now.

It was at times like this that Oriya wished he had stuck with medicine. Maybe then he would have known what to do to help the man, and he might not have felt so utterly useless. Sakaki's blood left sticky prints on his phone as Oriya flipped it open, and, with trembling hand, dialed 119.


	24. Only solutions

Tensions cooled somewhat after Kurikara's battle with Hisoka, though there remained a palpable sense that the right provocation could undo the fragile truce. As a distraction, Suugo challenged Senrima to a race through the desert, which the horse shiki only barely won—by a few hundred meters, or a few seconds—defending her legendary status; and the tengu learned the hard way never to make wagers with astrologers.

Inside Kurikara's cliff-edge fortress, where Hisoka had first encountered the dragon, Ame-no-Murakumo and the Dragon King's other generals discussed terms for a resolution to the war, with Kijin and Rikugou representing the residents of the Capital, while the elders of Mount Kurama made sure both parties behaved themselves in accordance with the sacred laws. Even the tsuchigumo, who since the days of the Golden Emperor had refused to recognize the rule of any government over Gensoukai, declared their intentions to forge a new path of cooperation into the future, even if they still refused to bend any one of their eight knees to any master.

Kazuma, who along with Nonomiya represented Meifu's interests in the proceedings—such as those were in a world where Enma had no jurisdiction—had been quick to pass the tsuchigumo off as dumb, barbarous arthropods. But as talks went on, she came to understand them as a people, with a proud and cultured past, and extraordinary weavers of some of the finest raiments worn by Gensoukai's citizens, a few of which they were gracious enough to gift to the shinigami. Kazuma found herself humbled by their generosity—even if it was still incredibly nerve-racking to stand next to one of them. Or to think that the gorgeous tunic that fit her like a second skin had originally come out of some of their people's butts.

Sohryuu's representatives arrived not long after the dust from the duel had settled, just as concerned as Kazuma was to see their worst fear had come to pass. Except, in their case, it was what Kurosaki might do with his newfound power that they feared most; Kurikara was, at least, a known entity to them. But they grudgingly joined the conversation, none quite having the temerity to contradict Rikugou's wisdom or that of Sohryuu's own son. Not to mention, none wanted to be the one who dealt Kurikara an offense that restarted hostilities as soon as they had ceased.

Of course, once everyone had returned to the Capital, opinions were sure to come out in the open. But by then, Kazuma could assure herself, she and her coworkers would be literally worlds away.

As for Hisoka, now that he had accomplished what he set out to do, he could feel what time he had left in this world slipping away from him.

And still Kurikara had been avoiding every opportunity to speak with Hisoka alone, surrounding himself with his subjects and diplomatic talks so that it appeared he was too busy for anything else. If Hisoka returned to Enma-cho without getting that chance, this trip may not have been in vain, but it would be about as useful to him as if he had just stayed home. He could not risk summoning Kurikara in the Real World as he had done Rikugou, without first testing to see where the two of them stood. The records may have shown that they were compatible, but by just how much?

At last, Kurikara ducked out while the conversation had moved on to matters that did not need him present. But not without meeting Hisoka's eyes across the room first, his own narrowed in a distrustful glare.

Even if it was a frosty one, it seemed like the only invitation Hisoka was going to get. And Rikugou's encouraging elbowing indicated the Astrologer had caught that look and come to the same conclusion. Seeing as the peace talks didn't concern him—in fact, given his history in Gensoukai, it would be better for all if he butted out of them completely—Hisoka slipped out of the room after Kurikara, confident he would not be missed.

He followed the Dragon King deeper and higher into the rock, until he emerged on top of what appeared to be a vast plateau, open to the sky, and the foundations of a huge palace complex rivaling Tenkuu in size.

Or the ruins of one, anyway. There were walkways that extended like runways, and bridges spanning canals and large pools cut into the rock. There were terraces of steps leading up to grand hallways, with tiled roofs and elaborately carved stone colonnades and bannisters. But if one looked closer, one started to see the evidence of scorching everywhere. Many of the carvings had collapsed, crumbled, or eroded away. And where there should have been lakes and gardens, there were only rain puddles and barren, hard-packed soil.

"There used to be a great city here, if you can believe it," Kurikara said, startling Hisoka from his thoughts. "An advanced civilization—for its time, anyway. One to rival even the Capital of the gods."

Hisoka recalled the ancient murals that peeked out of the caves and rock faces in these parts, and he wondered just how old this place was, how many ages of Gensoukai history had it seen. Was it older than Kurikara himself? Older than the Emperor? Was it even possible for anything in this world to be older than the man who had supposedly dreamt it into being?

"This whole place was filled with life," Kurikara went on. "Green, growing things, as Rikugou likes to say. And happy people. Humans and gods, living in harmony, side by side. It was a paradise in the middle of the desert. Shambhala, they called it. The Place of Peace."

"Shambhala was a real place?" Though Hisoka wasn't sure why he should be surprised. He was in a world full of dragons and unicorns, after all.

Perhaps thinking the same thing, Kurikara chuckled. But there was sadness in it as well. "Once," he said, sobering. "It was as real as anything is here. And I was its king. Until I destroyed it."

Kurikara said so so casually, as he leaned against a railing overlooking the ruins, Hisoka could almost forget the deep well of pain buried beneath those words.

But he had felt it. Keenly. As if that pain were his own. The responsibility. The guilt. The loss for what he had built and then destroyed with his own hands. Those memories were a part of his own now. If he wanted to experience them, he had only to bring them back to the surface. Like checking out a book from his own internal library, that he could peruse any time he wanted.

It must have been knowing that that made Kurikara so cold to him, and so honest at the same time. After all, he had tried to hide his past from Hisoka already. No, not hide exactly. It _was_ a matter of public record. Kurikara had tried to keep it his alone to bear. He had holed himself up in this prison so that he would be reminded of his sins day in and out for millennia. But in the end he had failed. A touch was all it took, and suddenly he was no longer the only one shouldering that burden.

And yet he resented Hisoka for lightening that load.

"We need to talk," Hisoka said, feeling the urgency of the matter press upon him all the more now that he stood across from Kurikara. "I need to know where we stand now that your test is over."

"You want to know if you passed, is that it?" Kurikara glared at him from the corner of his good eye. A smile itched at his lips, but Hisoka couldn't hope it was anything but sarcastic. "You want to hear me say, in my own voice, that you _won_ me."

Rikugou had cautioned him not to use that word, and Hisoka thought it wise to take his advice. He had shown enough hubris already, in provoking Kurikara into their duel. But his goal here was not to provoke. Quite the opposite.

"I just want to understand what happened," Hisoka said gently, ignoring Kurikara's knee-jerk scoff. "And, yes, I would like to know, once and for all: Are you my guardian now or not?"

"Your decisive victory was not proof enough?"

"To be honest, it didn't feel like much of a victory. More like a stalemate. And when you said that you refused to serve me, I had to wonder if I had failed in some vital way."

Maybe Kurikara's refusal had been only empty words, as Rikugou had assured him. The posturing of a dragon who didn't want to accept that he was yoked to a new master. But what if they were true? If Kurikara's power level was virtually unparalleled, what was to say that he couldn't simply decide for himself to reject Hisoka as his master?

The dragon's answer in no way clarified matters, either. "If you want to know why I was so against the idea of becoming your shikigami, Kurosaki, you need only look around you."

"Makes sense," Hisoka said as he looked out over the once-great city. "As soon as I touched you, I knew how you felt about this place. I know you still suffer for what you did here, and I wouldn't want to set myself up for that kind of pain all over again, either, if I thought I could help it."

Perhaps that was the real reason Tsuzuki had failed to gain Kurikara when he tried before. Matters of compatibility weren't everything, or else Terazuma and Shungei would never have worked at all. But if two souls were _too alike_ . . .

If they had experienced the same trauma, committed the same crimes, were still in the thrall of similar guilt, the result would have been a toxic relationship of epic proportions. Each one feeding the other's bad habits, and added to that, the powers that each possessed . . . It could not have led anywhere good.

"I don't think you do understand." But Kurikara thought better of whatever else was on the tip of his tongue. He said instead: "Let me see your hand."

He meant the one Hisoka had injured in their battle. The request so took Hisoka by surprise that he tried to hide it behind himself, but Kurikara was quicker. He grabbed Hisoka's wrist, and Hisoka hissed as his burns, just starting to heal over, pulled in the dragon's strong grip.

Muscle and nerve and bone ought to have been exposed where the flesh had melted off the back of Hisoka's hand. Instead, there was a thin layer of finely scaled dermis over the wound, smooth as the skin of a baby snake beneath a first shedding, and the same caramel-apple green as a fresh scab.

"Ah," Kurikara said. "I wondered how you survived my _qi_ the first time we met. Now I see it was protecting you all along."

"'It'?"

Kurikara practically shoved his hand away again. "Don't play dumb. You already know what it is I mean. You called on it to aid you, to prove to me that you were _special_."

 _And to prove to you why I needed to be killed._ Hisoka could hear that indictment between his words. "You mean the yatonokami."

Kurikara tried not to visibly chafe when Hisoka said that name, but his aura gave him away. As though just saying the name Yatonokami were speaking a curse. "Just how much did Rikugou tell you about that creature inside you, Kurosaki?"

 _Why keep bringing Rikugou into this?_ But Hisoka thought he knew why. It had bothered him as well, the nagging feeling that the Astrologer had somehow set him up, made of him an unwitting subject in a controlled experiment. "Not as much as I would have liked. He didn't seem to know much about it. Until, suddenly, he knew more than he was saying."

"Typical of him," Kurikara muttered under his breath.

"But I spoke to Yatonokami himself, and he showed me everything I could possibly want to know about him. Things I wish now I could forget. What he did to my village—what he did to my _family_ —"

"And did Yatonokami happen to share with you, in this little dialog the two of you shared, that it was an embodiment of sin? The delusion of hatred and vengeance made flesh?"

Something in the way Kurikara said so made it seem to Hisoka that the Dragon King could think of nothing worse than that; yet it sounded mild compared to some of the enemies Hisoka had faced. "I got the hatred and vengeance part easily enough," he shrugged. "But it's not like the thing didn't have good reason. My ancestor killed its original body, and the only way it's been able to survive is by clinging to the DNA of its murderer. It's a pretty pitiful existence, if you ask me."

"Of course, it would want to gain your sympathies, wouldn't it? You two do share a body, after all. Even if you didn't, that's how it works. It feeds on your insecurities, on your lusts, magnifying your weaknesses until you feel that you're justified in taking actions against your enemies that ought to be repugnant to you. And, believe me, you see your enemies everywhere. Even those you once loved you suspect of scheming against you, until there is nothing left you can trust. Nothing except that little voice in your ear whispering its lies, telling you no matter what you do, no matter what atrocities you commit on the least deserving of victims, you are right and they had it coming."

"Are we still talking about Yatonokami, or Chaos?" Hisoka said. "Kijin described it pretty much the same way. He said the last war let it into Gensoukai, and that it incited both sides against each other?"

"Chaos is just a word we give to it for what it sows among us," Kurikara said. "But it is anything but disordered. It knows _exactly_ what it wants. It feeds on our fear and our hatred, grows stronger on it. And no matter how much we fight it— _if_ we have the strength to recognize and fight it—it always manages to survive, and regenerate. Just the smallest sliver can in time grow into a menace threatening all existence.

"That's what Yatonokami is, Kurosaki. Just one of many such slivers, scattered across the surface of the Earth. Digging under the surface, where they are allowed to fester while life prospers above. In time, poisoning the water around them, and all that drink from that water. Becoming a cancer on anything they touch, a plague—"

"A curse."

Kurikara almost sounded sorry as he said "I don't need to tell you what that entails, do I? If that yatonokami showed you what it was up to the past millennia, you already know. Just as you know, from my memories, that I allowed myself to succumb to that particular poison once already. I felt that anger and lust for vengeance overtake my soul. Chaos used me like its puppet— _I,_ the Destroyer of Delusion, was made its slave!"

"Touda was made from that force, too, wasn't he?" Now Hisoka felt like he finally had the context to understand what Kurikara had shown him, and why the dragon had acted as he did. The Emperor had been audacious enough to think he could fight Chaos with harnessed chaos. It had been a choice of last resort, a decision made in desperation. Only Touda had proved beyond his ability to command.

It was a lesson that had cost Gensoukai dearly to learn. So it was no wonder that what shikigami still feared most was a repeat of it. "That's why you were so eager to destroy me when I called on Yatonokami. You were afraid just letting Chaos, in any form, back into this world might allow it to gain the same foothold it did in the last war.

"But you didn't know the yatonokami was in me when we first met. When I didn't die in your initial attack, you had no reason to wish me dead enough to want to fight me again. Now that I look back on it, you seemed to go out of your way to avoid a fight. You didn't _want_ to kill me then. As if you didn't want my death on your hands. The way you looked at me, it was almost as though . . . you pitied me."

Hisoka could still recall that look on Kurikara's face, even through the searing pain that had wracked his body at the time, inside and out. Even as he had struggled to get breath into scorched lungs, even as he raged at Riko's murder, he had seen that pity staring back at him, and it had made it that much harder to hate the Dragon King when he wanted to most.

 _Then why did you put me through that hell? Why make me suffer? What was it all for if you wouldn't even finish the job and put me out of my misery?_ Hisoka could remember thinking. But the question wasn't a new one. It seemed he had been asking it his entire existence.

Suddenly Kurikara couldn't meet his eyes. But his jaw clenched with the shame he couldn't quite hide from Hisoka.

"Then you understand that it was nothing personal. When you revealed that you carried that same living poison inside you . . . A blade recognizes a blade, and I knew that one's subtle edge all too well. Whatever my feelings about you, they were irrelevant. I felt compelled to destroy it, before it had a chance to work its evil on me again. If that meant I had to destroy you along with it, then that was how it had to be."

That was the second time Hisoka had heard that expression in so many days: "A blade recognizes a blade." It made sense coming from Ame-no-Murakumo, who _was_ a sword. Though in his dragon form Kurikara looked to be some amalgam of organic creature and machine—not unlike Sohryuu or Touda or Suugo, or a dozen other shikigami—he looked nothing like a sword. And Hisoka told him so.

Much to the dragon's amusement. "But I _am_ one," he said with some measure of pride. "I was forged with the soul of a sword. A sword of wisdom, brought into this world to cut through all falsehoods and delusions."

"Except one, I'm guessing."

"The Sword of Night embodies an ancient force," Kurikara said in a low voice, as though careful not to wake its iteration inside Hisoka. "Much older than myself—much older than Gensoukai, even. It is said that if you could see its true form, it would be like staring into the Abyss. In a sense, we all have a bit of that abyss inside ourselves. Not even gods are immune.

"Rikugou understood that. Otherwise, as your sworn guardian, he would not have felt confident enough to push you on me, and risk losing you completely. He knew you would be safe in my jaws, because the Sword of Night is a sword I cannot break. No matter how I try, the best I can ever do is neutralize its power. The moment the yatonokami revealed itself in you, I should have guessed the outcome of our fight, as he had. Still, I resisted, believing I could beat you, if only so I wouldn't have to serve the very thing I loathe most."

"Not to mention, your streak of masterlessness would go on unbroken."

"That being inside you is a creature of sin incarnate!" Kurikara said with renewed fervor, as though convinced Hisoka still wasn't getting it. Though, in truth, Hisoka hadn't said that to be glib. "Its ilk are a curse on _all_ worlds that should have been hunted to oblivion ages ago! The Sword of Night is nothing but pure aggression honed into an indestructible form. It stands for everything that I have been battling in myself ever since I was betrayed. So I know better than most what an evil and tenacious thing it is. Do you understand now why I was so determined to either destroy or avoid you at all costs? I cannot afford to be attached to that sin as you have! Never again!"

Hisoka bristled under the accusation. _I am a creature of sin incarnate._ It may have been the first time anyone had put it in terms so blunt, but in many ways he had been hearing it his entire life. From his victims as a shinigami. From his own parents when they shut him away. He must have known, even in his childhood, in the back of his mind where he filed the things servants whispered about in terror when they thought he couldn't hear, that this thing in the Kurosaki line, this curse, was caustic. Malignant. A disease, not just in the village's water, but in his cells. In his soul. One destined to rot him from the inside out. He felt it in Yatonokami when he reached out to it directly—when it showed him his own conception, and how he had never been given the choice but to be a monster.

And for that—"You fear me."

Kurikara made a face of disgust, reluctant even now to admit as much. "I distrust you. You're unnatural, and antithetical to my very nature. You represent everything I was made to control, yet now you are in a position to control me. So, perhaps," he bitterly conceded, "I do fear you. I fear what you will make me do. I fear that you will drag me down into that pit of vengeance with you."

"I would never—"

"Ah, but you already tried to do the same to Rikugou. You can't deny it, Kurosaki. When we touched, my mind may have been as an open book to you, but you passed something to me as well. I felt a little of the pain that you experienced, and the anger and hatred you still harbor for the man who killed you. It was only a taste, but it was more than I felt I could stand. I wanted to tear him apart myself. I wanted to sink my teeth into his flesh and taste his blood, until I could feel the pounding of his heart cease."

As he stood there, watching Kurikara curl his fists at the thought of Muraki, Hisoka felt a hope he had tried unsuccessfully to bury within him surge. Rikugou had warned him against using shikigami to seek his revenge, but here Kurikara seemed not just willing but eager to carry out justice for him.

But it surprised him as well, because it meant, if only once, Kurikara had felt protective toward him. Fiercely so. And if he was to be Hisoka's guardian, surely that was a reassuring first step?

"But I don't know what good it will do," Kurikara went on, relaxing his hands, "if the opposition in our natures cancels out our powers. I worry that if you should call on me, that conflict between us will render us both useless, just when we need our strength the most."

Hisoka wanted to deny that the same thought had occurred to him, but he could not. It was there in the back of his mind from the moment Kurikara said that he could only neutralize the powers of the Yato.

But that couldn't be all that compatibility meant! Their names were written together in that tome inside Tenkuu, and for what any of this was worth, Hisoka had to believe there was some deep significance to that. Or else why would Rikugou and Kijin both risk so much to ensure he gained Kurikara as his shikigami? Surely it couldn't be to remove Kurikara and himself both as a threat, in one fell swoop. Hisoka might have believed Sohryuu capable of such underhandedness, but not the others.

Unless he really didn't know them at all. Rikugou and Kijin were fighting for their world's survival, after all. Hisoka would not have been able to say he blamed them if they saw neutralizing him and Kurikara in each other, as one might neutralize a flesh-eating acid, as the most effective way of doing that. Neither of them really owed him anything. Even Rikugou, for all he professed to serve Hisoka, was Tsuzuki's guardian first.

"There's another possibility," Hisoka found himself saying, because he had to have hope that there was some higher reason to all this—one that didn't involve leaving him powerless. "Maybe the two of us were meant to be together, not to spite our natures, but because of them. Maybe I need you not because you cancel out my powers, but because you cleanse them. Stabilize them. If it's true that I can't escape the sinful nature of the yatonokami that made me, then maybe it's your wisdom I need behind me to help me do what's right, and filter out all the negative stuff that could cause me to fail."

Kurikara looked as though he wanted to say something in protest, but something stopped his tongue. He let Hisoka keep going.

"Maybe you even need me—though God knows what for. But I know that what you fear more than anything is losing control again. You don't need to be ashamed of that. I understand what that feels like. But maybe, just maybe, by yoking yourself to me as my guardian, ensuring _I_ don't overstep _my_ bounds, your powers won't be taken away from you. They'll be focused. Like how a lens," Hisoka grasped for the first analogy to come to mind, "focuses light into a single, intense beam. A beam that is not diminished in any way but is perhaps made even stronger, because it can then be aimed with precision."

For a long moment, it seemed, Kurikara could only stare at him in a kind of stunned silence. Perhaps the same thought had not yet occurred to him.

Or perhaps it had, but it took someone else voicing the same crazy theory to finally lend it the legitimacy it lacked before. Kurikara smiled wryly at the thought, saying, "I think I'm beginning to understand how you were able to use the Emperor's bow against me."

There he went with that bow again. "What's so special about it anyway?" Other than the power that Hisoka had felt flowing through him when he used it, as if the bow and even the arrows in flight had been a natural extension of his body and mind. "You keep bringing it up like it's some sort of super-weapon, but it didn't seem to do me much good."

"Only because you were using it against a _dragon._ It was really no more than a silly bet Genbu dreamt up to trick Sohryuu and me into working toward a common end, back before the war," Kurikara explained to Hisoka's blank look. "Sohryuu insisted the bowstring was the most important part of the weapon, while, naturally, I said it was the arrows. So we each set out to prove we were right, throwing our very souls into our work, but in the end we were forced to concede a draw. The only real winner was the Emperor. He had a brand-new bow and quiver of arrows, both blessed from having been made by dragons, and vastly superior to any others in the land."

"So, the Emperor _was_ a real person. He wasn't just some metaphor or a false memory, he really did exist." Wasn't this old debate the reason for Sohryuu's current condition? That was what Hisoka had gleaned from his last visit to Gensoukai, anyway. That doubt over the Emperor's existence had begun Sohryuu's descent into a kind of madness. Or maybe he had it backwards. Maybe the current conflict or Tsuzuki's disappearance had started it, and the doubt was just a symptom.

Hisoka thought he was on to some great revelation with that statement, but Kurikara gave him a strange look that took the wind out of his sails. "I never said the Emperor didn't exist."

"I thought you told Sohryuu you didn't believe in him."

"I don't. But believing in someone and acknowledging that they existed are two entirely different things. Heavens, Kurosaki, surely even a child like you can see that!

"Which only makes what you did that much harder to believe," Kurikara added before Hisoka had a moment to take offense at his first comment. "Such a bow can only be wielded by a righteous person. Yet everything I know about what you are and how you were brought into being tells me that it shouldn't have worked for you. Not in a million years. It should have been as a lump of lead in your hands—impossible to pick up let alone to nock. And even if sheer will had gotten you that far, the twang of the bowstring should have been repellant to your ears. The arrows should have circled back and pierced you, like the demon spawn that you are."

Gee, thanks, Hisoka thought. Even if he knew Kurikara said that, not as an insult, but as though he were merely stating a fact, still he could have chosen a nicer way to phrase it.

"But my creations cannot lie. Somehow, despite that creature inside you, the fact that you were able to use that bow proves your righteousness. Or, at very least, that you came here, to my kingdom, and used that weapon against me with righteous cause. I cannot deny that, but I cannot explain it either, and that pains me like you wouldn't believe."

"Then don't try to explain it." Shikigami put far too much trust in fate and prophecies and everything working according to its intended function within the machinery of their world, as far as Hisoka was concerned. "Whatever I may be by birth, that doesn't dictate what kind of person I have to be in the present, or how I have to act."

"It does in this world," Kurikara said with a glare.

But it was a wary one, expectant. Waiting to see whether Hisoka could succeed in making his case. "I'm not from your world," he said. "And, forgive me, but that's an awfully fatalist view for a being as powerful as you to bow down to."

"Yet you expect me to bow down to _you_. As per the conditions of our duel and the nature of my being. How is that any different?"

"Because I refuse to run from or deny the truth of what I am," Hisoka told him, "and I refuse to let it control me. Yatonokami is a part of me, it's true, but it's only a part. I may be shinigami, but I'm still, at heart, human. And I feel as a human feels. I know better than most what it's like to be constantly fighting what everyone tells you is your fate. But far from a weakness or a curse, or something to be ashamed of, I have to think of what I am as an asset. An opportunity I've been afforded, to do what I would never have been able to do if I'd been born an ordinary human. Or else I don't know how I would find it worth my while to keep going. I have to believe that I can do better. For the people I care about, I have to believe that I can overcome my nature. Not defeat it, not change it exactly, but control it. Use it. Products of sin though they may be, I can take the abilities the yatonokami gave me and use them to do good. To do something righteous, as you say."

"And is slaying Muraki your idea of righteousness?"

It seemed the battle may have ended, but Hisoka was still being tested by the dragon. He could not deny how his longing for justice fueled him, but it was only one of the reasons he wanted Kurikara now, and no longer as near the top of his list as it was even a year ago. Finding out you were half monster had a way of upsetting the order of your priorities.

"You were a protector once before," Hisoka said instead, aware he was taking advantage of their surroundings but knowing it had to be done if he hoped to pierce through all of Kurikara's defenses. "You defended the people who lived here—at least at one time. It was what you were made for, and you believed in it with your entire being. You still do. I've felt it. And I've seen it these last few days in the way you stand up for the creatures that live in this wasteland, the way you want to make sure no one is denied their fair shot. Well, aren't _you_ tired of being thought of as the aggressor, the villain? You say you can't change who you are, but maybe the bigger question, Kurikara, is are you being what you were made to be?"

After a long moment's thought, Kurikara's good eye, which had remained focused unblinking on Hisoka, seemed to soften with resignation. And . . . something else. Tenderness, perhaps, if only a reluctant kind.

"You asked if I would fight for you, Kurosaki," Kurikara said, "and I tell you now, in no uncertain terms, I will. Not because I like you or completely trust your motives. I see all the worst qualities of myself when I look at you, and that doesn't exactly inspire my confidence."

 _But?_ There had to be a "but" in there somewhere, right?

"But I'll fight for you," Kurikara said, "because while you saw into my soul, I caught a glimpse into yours. And even though I know how much you're like me, I also know how you're _not_ like _him._ Do you understand what I'm saying?"

 _That I'm not like the Emperor. You're trusting me not to turn my back on you when you need me most. You're asking for_ my _loyalty in return._

Hisoka knew as soon as he asked himself whether that was a condition he could fulfill what his answer was. "Perfectly."

"I just hope you're right about this focusing theory of yours," the dragon grumbled. "And you'd better make sure that when you do call on me, it's for a cause that's truly worth it. I'm putting too much on the line, trusting you with my power, to have you drag me down to hell."

* * *

While he watched Hisoka leave after Kurikara, someone flicked Rikugou's ponytail—what little of it had grown out in the last few days—from behind, and he started.

"Didn't see _that_ coming, did you," said Kokushungei, glaring at him, "Mister King of Birds—"

"I am king of nothing." And really, he never liked that name. Not that calling oneself "Universe" was any less pretentious. But just because he had finally let his true form show, after all these centuries. . . .

"No," Shungei hummed in agreement, "I suppose not. But you _are_ the prime mover in this world now, by your own design. More dangerous than both dragons combined, if you ask me, simply because of the choices you have made. Using that boy as your pawn. . . . And all us other pieces on the board have played our parts _exactly_ as you wanted us to."

She stared at him as though waiting for him to try and deny it. But what good would that have done?

So instead, he smiled.

And Shungei clucked her tongue. "You devious sonofabitch. Playing us all for fools. No wonder Tsuzuki never called on you for assistance. There's no telling what you would do, or if you would even obey. Or was he just as blind as the rest of us to what you really are—"

"And what am I?"

"Someone who would sell out his own master to serve his interests."

Rikugou laughed. If only she knew that she was part of those interests. They all were: their entire world. But, again, he didn't care to correct her, no matter that this time her accusation had flown quite wide of the mark. As to be expected, it said more about Shungei than it did about Rikugou himself.

"I swore that I would be avenged on you," she admitted to him, her casual tone belying the seriousness of the confession. "Whatever I may have said about Hajime back there, I don't blame him for our disconnection. You and I both know it was your _qi_ that exorcised me back to this realm."

Then it was Rikugou's turn to glare. "I suppose you want to have it out with me."

"I _did._ That was the promise I made to myself, should I ever see you again."

"But . . .?"

Shungei heaved a great sigh. It seemed to take some effort to speak honestly. "I know an equal portion of the blame rests with me. I was not strong enough, and the two of us not compatible enough, for me to hold on to him. No matter how fond of him I've become."

"You protected him from my attack," Rikugou reminded her. "Hajime still exists now because you sacrificed yourself to save him. You have nothing to be guilty for, when I was the one who lost control."

"But I could have tried harder!" Shungei hissed through gritted teeth. "I _should_ have been stronger for him!"

"Or," Rikugou interrupted, "one could argue that you did _precisely_ what you were meant to."

That put a pause to Shungei's protests. She blinked at Rikugou, her features softening.

For all of a few seconds. Mere words could not soothe the kind of guilt harbored by a shiki who had done less than what he or she had intended. But it did give her something to think about.

"Speaking of masters and interests," Rikugou said in a lighter register, "I seem to recall an old Daughter of the Dragon telling me not that long ago that she was done with humanity completely. . . ."

He turned his gaze toward Kazuma, who was scratching K while the cat sat in her lap, she and Nonomiya laughing at some ribald joke a tengu had just told them.

Even against her dark skin, he caught Shungei's blush out of the corner of one of his several eyes. She did not try to hide it from him, either. "Yeah. Well. You can't plan for everything, can you? When the right person comes along—"

"You just feel it," Rikugou finished for her. He remembered the sensation well. Reaching into his soul and shaking him, as though he had been disturbed from an eons-long meditation. It was a calling, like a song from out of the past that he could not ignore, even if he wanted to.

And for a moment he had wanted to. Because in the moment he heard the call, he knew what answering it meant he would have to give up. Though Heaven knew he had fought to keep it all. He was still fighting. Even knowing logically that it was futile, he still believed against all evidence that he was special and strong enough to do what others could not. _You cannot serve two masters, Rikugou._

"How are you going to explain this to him, Shungei? When you return to Meifu?"

* * *

Keijou screamed as the barbs of the whip carved chunks of flesh out of his back. It was music to a devil's ears, the screams of a man who had no dignity left in him to lose.

Or, perhaps, he had a little left. "He's given us nothing, milord," said the chicken-legged, nearly-toothless crone who ran this particular block of torture chambers. "Not even when we put him to the screws. He will only tell us his name and rank and date of death, and that there is no possible way for a demon of Hell to enter of its own volition into Meifu."

Focalor narrowed his eyes as he watched through the one-way window. That he could not believe.

"Perhaps," the crone ventured when he continued to say nothing, "it makes no sense to torture someone who is already dead. What does he have to fear to make him talk?"

"All you do is torture dead souls," he spat back at her. "Shinigami are no different. If anything, they have more incentive. What that man has to fear is that there will never be an end to the torments we can heap upon his material flesh. However," it was plain to see that Keijou had trained himself well, if he could endure this torment without speaking. "I doubt anything more will make him give us the answers we need. He's more loyal than a whipped dog. He isn't likely to turn on his master."

"I-if I may make a suggestion, milord. . . ." A foul new thought lit up the crone's face with an ugly smile that showed off one rotting fang. She wasn't ready to throw this useless fish back just yet. "I know this one's type, seen it countless times before. He won't bend no matter how inventively we wound the flesh so long as he has his hopped-up sense of his own masculinity to fall back on. But if we have him buggered . . ."

She trailed off in a sadistic little laugh that turned even Focalor's stomach. Maybe he had spent too much time in this mortal vessel. It was starting to give him a conscience.

"I must insist otherwise. His body would repair itself, but I need his soul to remain useful," he told the crone, much to her disappointment. "But test your theory. Have him stripped, make him think your most obscenely endowed goons are going to have their way with him, and at the last moment, spare him. Extend to him my express mercy. Say I caught wind of your evil little plot just in time to put an end to it. But be sure you give him no reason to suspect my hand in anything but his salvation. I am his only friend in this entire place. Is that understood?" And Focalor added to himself, recognizing a familiar excitement growing inside him, _I will have him agreeable to me and me alone_.

"You have my word," lisped the crone in a conspiratorial whisper, "when we're through with him, he'll be singing your praises, milord."

Not that Focalor found her word to be terribly reassuring. But he had to trust that fear of retribution would be sufficient to ensure she followed his orders. He might have stayed himself, to see that the job was done right, if one of his legions had not arrived at that moment to tell him he had a call. "A _call_? From whom?"

His dead heart sank in him when the legion answered: "It's an exorcist, milord."

Inside her protective circle, back in the throne room, the projection of Tsukiori Kira crossed her arms over her chest. "I demand to speak to King Astaroth herself," she said to the horse-headed and bull-headed demons who had answered her call. She had tried reasoning with them for the last five long minutes and it had gotten her nowhere. "I need to hear it from your Lord's very mouth, that this rumor she's holding a mortal woman captive in Hell isn't true."

"Not only is it true," Focalor said as she strode into the room, "but it's all completely above-board." He gestured to Ashtaroth's two demons that they were dismissed. He would handle the exorcist's complaints himself.

At the sight of him, Kira fumed. "I don't believe that. It goes against the very laws she helped put in place—"

"We have a legitimate contract, stating that Muraki Kazutaka surrenders a child of his blood to King Ashtaroth in exchange for his freedom from all further obligations to Her Majesty."

As he anticipated, that stopped Kira's self-righteous posturing in her tracks. At least temporarily. "That woman is carrying Muraki's child?"

"You know who he is?"

"Of course I know who Muraki is." Kira blinked, offended he thought so little of her. "A mortal man who does that much business with demons and isn't an exorcist himself? I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't know about him. Now answer my question, Focalor!"

Focalor couldn't help a wry grin. He should have known this young woman, who was such a thorn in his side, wouldn't be satisfied by his explanation. But it was no skin off his nose to answer. "No. Muraki is not the father. But there is ample genetic similarity for the child to be said to be 'of his blood,' or else the deal wouldn't hold. And since the contract has been ratified by both parties, I don't see that you have grounds—"

"But the child hasn't been born yet, has it? Your master's contract is only for the child, not the mother. And I would wager _she_ didn't agree to any of this. She ought to be released at once."

Focalor gritted his teeth against what would have been some unwise words. Had he a stronger body, and had he been in her world rather than she in his, he might not have held himself in such close check. Even if the part she had played in nearly destroying him in Nagasaki had been minor compared to those shinigami, and even if Kira did still work on behalf of his queen, his King, he could not forgive her her arrogance and meddling.

"Released into what?" Focalor argued instead. "Into a wilderness of other forces that would just as soon destroy her than let her be delivered of that child, forces over which we have no control outside this world? Ms. Sakuraiji is being treated to luxuries no human soul has ever been treated to in this realm, even in her captivity. We are doing her a favor keeping her from harm."

"Locked up, you mean. Like a breeding bitch."

Truth be told, Focalor was actually enjoying this, if only for how much the whole thing bothered Tsukiori. "That is how _you_ see it, with your anthropocentric bias. You're all animals from where I'm standing. There's not one of you that couldn't benefit from some time in a cage. But I fail to see what difference any of this makes. You serve the will of Ashtaroth, it is by her name that you are granted the power to cast out our kind, and this is her will."

"I cast out your kind in the name of the Almighty God and Jesus Christ," Kira corrected him.

The name still offended, but the Okazaki boy had said the name of Christ so many times while Focalor was sharing his body, he had grown used to it in a masochistic way, like a habit of cutting or battery licking. A little pain to release a little pleasure. He merely shrugged. "Semantics."

And yet, despite her bullheadedness, Kira must have seen the reason in his arguments. She knew there was nothing she in her power could do if Ashtaroth refused to listen to her pleas. This was what came of believing she could serve both the ideals of Heaven and a devil of Hell. Sooner, rather than later, the two were bound to oppose one another.

"Let me see the contract," Kira said.

A request Focalor was happy to comply with.

The words hovered in glowing script before her, the ancient symbols demanding careful attention even from someone with as much proficiency in them as the exorcist. Finally, Kira said, "Zepar was the notary on this?"

Oh, how delicious her displeasure was to him! Though, if he were honest, Zepar wasn't the first devil Focalor would have trusted to this task, either. That creature was ambitious and self-absorbed, not the best choice for a job that demanded absolute fidelity. Still, "You don't trust the legality of the contract because you have a personal beef against the one who drew it up? Even after you humiliated him? I'd say you two are damn well even, after you stripped him of his glamour for all his peers to see."

"Do _you_ trust him? With something this delicate?"

Focalor's smile fell. No. No, he did not.

"Do you even know where he is right now?"

* * *

As if out of a pleasant dream, the voice called Ukyou. _His_ voice. Comforting. Safe. Asking her only to receive the love it was giving.

And in that, reminding her so much of Kazutaka. Not the one who always came to visit her, perhaps, but the one who spoke to her through letters: the romantic, the idealist, the one who actually _felt_ things. The honest Kazutaka she always knew he could be. If he only tried.

She gave in to that voice once already. Under the influence of alcohol and nostalgia, but it hadn't been the alcohol or the nostalgia's fault. Somehow that voice found her within a loneliness she had buried so long she had forgotten it was there, and forgotten how deep it truly was.

So why had he turned so cold on her after the warmth of that new year's eve night? Avoided her at all hours of the day? If she looked back, she regretted that she had treated him just the same, old fears preventing her from getting that close to him again. But surely he must have known how she was drawn, like a magnet, to his beauty, and grace, and the safety of his touch. Surely he must have felt it. So why did he have to take it all away again?

She felt the soft weight of his hand, warm as it stroked down her arm, and let it pull her into wakefulness, like a lifeline to the surface. "Tsuzuki. . . ."

He laughed softly, and her ears delighted in the sound. Just as her eyes delighted in his face, his beautiful smile, slowly coming into focus. "Well, yes. Who else would it be?"

Could it be the last several months had been nothing but a dream? Would she wake to find the new year was just beginning, last night's sake and soba still waiting for their return?

But with consciousness, so came her surroundings. This wasn't a dream.

This was Hell.

"What are you doing here?" Sleep drugged her vocal chords, her limbs. It felt like she was under a spell, if such things existed. Though in Hell, perhaps, spells were commonplace. She looked up into his eyes for assurance. The same purple hue she remembered, shifting toward wine-crimson in the warm, low light of her dining room.

But different. Something different there that was vicious, malignant. Something skull-like, hollow, in his face. Even if she could only catch the briefest glimpse of it before it was covered up by the illusion.

That feeling of safety turned to terror. With a jolt, Ukyou sat up, edging away from his touch as much as she was able in her stubborn stupor—and why, for that matter, did she feel drunk when she was certain she hadn't had a drop of alcohol to drink in all the time she'd been here? "Who are you?" she demanded.

"What do you mean?" To his credit, his hurt could have passed for the real thing. "Don't you recognize me? Tsuzuki Asato? You only let me live with you for, what, almost seven months."

"You're not Tsuzuki." She didn't know how she knew that, but she did. With growing certainty. She looked about wildly. "Where's Keijou?" unsure whether she asked because suddenly she needed his protection, or she didn't want him to see her like this. As though this impostor before her were merely a manifestation of some guilty dream, some flashback of her own secret lusts.

"Shh, he's merely out taking some exercise—"

The false Tsuzuki tried to calm her, but Ukyou slapped his hands away. "Don't touch me! I don't know who you are, but I know who you're definitely not!"

And she was ready to swear that as many times as it took.

But the man must have taken the hint. He sat back on the foot of the bed with a sigh. "Well, this is slightly embarrassing. Usually I don't have this problem."

"Problem?"

"Convincing you I am the object of your deepest desires," false-Tsuzuki explained. "Unless I misread the situation. Perhaps it's not really Tsuzuki that you desire after all."

Or perhaps, Ukyou thought, she had once. If only in a moment of weakness. Her talk with Keijou had changed her already tarnished perspective of Tsuzuki, however, even if she still couldn't help defending him. He frightened her, more than anything, repulsed her with the knowledge of what he was capable of doing, and she chastised herself endlessly for ever allowing herself to fall under his spell, let alone give in to it.

She might have given in to Kazutaka's, too, once upon a time, if he hadn't been so adamant about protecting Ukyou from himself. She understood now that he meant it all those times he wrote that he loved her—that it was _because_ he loved her that he could only speak truthfully and intimately in a posted letter. It was just this kind of regret and self-disgust he'd been saving her from all along.

"Still, I hope you don't mind if I keep this face," said the devil-Tsuzuki. "For the meantime. Let me live in the illusion." And he smiled.

Now Ukyou saw the cast to his eyes was far more red than violet—even his complexion and hair color were ever so slightly redshifted. "Who are you?"

"I don't think so," Zepar laughed. "Tell you my name, and give you power over me? You can continue to think of me as your Tsuzuki, if it pleases you—"

"It doesn't."

"Nonetheless. I won't bother you long. Just came to see how the child was coming along."

There was something in the way he said "the child," as if it were literally a bun baking in an oven, that made Ukyou clutch the blanket tightly over her belly. As if that could possibly protect her from a devil and its intentions. She wanted to scream for help—surely her guards, though she despised them, would come to her rescue if she were in danger—but she worried it might only make this one angry. And he was too close to risk angering him.

"Relax," Zepar told her, lest this human give herself a heart attack. "I'm not here to hurt it. Perish the thought. I serve the same master as Focalor, so why would I want to damage my master's property?"

"My child doesn't belong to you devils," Ukyou growled. Surprising herself in the process. She usually was loth to think of it as _her_ child, but this devil brought out a protective instinct in her.

But Zepar shook his head.

"Then it really pains me to tell you—" though it sounded anything but painful, "—that, in fact, it does. You see, a deal was made wherein that child was submitted as trade for the closing of accounts. One soul for another. Blood for blood. Oh, the child will be given the best of everything, grow up a prince, I don't mean to imply it's some sort of sacrifice," he said to the horror on Ukyou's face. "Only, when we draw up contracts here, we make them to last. To be honest, I didn't think you'd mind us taking the babe off your hands when the time comes. You already tried to get rid of it once."

How dare he throw that back in her face? He had no right, none whatsoever, and no idea what she had been put through. Something gave within Ukyou that she had never felt give before, and she lashed out at the devil, hitting him like she had never dared hit another living thing. Her teeth hurt so much from gnashing them in her fury that she worried they might break.

But even that outburst was short-lived. Cursing the woman, Zepar managed after a few blows to get her wrists in his hands. His growled " _Stop it!_ " delivered in Tsuzuki's voice and body, had the desired effect. "I only came to check up on you because Muraki was concerned about the quality of your care," Zepar spat, "and this is the thanks I get?"

That, more than the strength of his grip, made Ukyou stop her struggling. "Kazutaka sent you?"

"No. But he asked about you, and that got me curious." A wicked sneer. "I had to see for myself what all the fuss was about. I'm not so sure yet it was worth it. Then again, it's the bland, predictable cooking of home we always run back to, isn't it, once we've had our fill of more exotic fare?"

Ukyou's stomach turned at that sneer. He reminded her of those lecherous young men in the park. "So, what?" She tried to keep the tremor out of her voice, and failed. "You thought you'd come in here wearing that face, and seduce me?"

"It's what I do. And it's usually much more effective. Maybe I need to work on my Tsuzuki. . . ."

"Or maybe I'm just not attracted to monsters."

At the accusation, Tsuzuki's face transformed into something truly hateful and demonic. Now she had done it, Ukyou thought with instant regret. Whatever his promises to Muraki, the devil wouldn't let that insult go unpunished.

But then something changed. His cruel lips curved upward in a grin, as though at some inside joke. And he purred, "Based on your history, I beg to differ."

The door of her cell screeched open before Zepar could raise a hand to her to test his theory, and Ukyou caught the look of concern on Focalor's face in the split second before it turned to murderous rage. " _You_ ," he growled at Zepar.

Who shot to his feet, his features shifting into something he thought his colleague might find more sympathetic as he backed away. "Now, brother, before you do anything rash—"

In an instant, Focalor was across the room. His vessel may have been decaying on him, but righteous indignation fueled him. His hands closed around Zepar's throat and shirt collar, and he lifted the red devil off his feet, slamming him down on top of the dishes from Ukyou's last meal.

"I don't want to hear any bullshit excuses, Zepar," Focalor said through teeth gritted so hard, Ukyou half expected them to crumble in his mouth. "If I find you have harmed Sakuraiji in any way, so help me I will castrate you with my bare hands—"

"He didn't do anything," Ukyou found herself saying, surprising all three of them. But it wasn't in Zepar's defense, she realized, nor even really to calm Focalor. It was what Zepar had said about Muraki that made her want both of them to just go away as soon as possible. Before Zepar could mention that Kazutaka had asked after her. If he had asked, it was possible he may have been planning to come for her as well. "He just wanted to see if I would give in to him," Ukyou told Focalor, "if he tested me. But I wouldn't."

She shot Zepar a hateful look. Only briefly. She could barely stand to look at him, and the beautiful face that wasn't his to wear. "He disgusts me."

Zepar grinned a smarmy grin beneath him, and it felt as though it took all Focalor's self-restraint not to punch it in. That and he had already taxed his vessel in his initial attack. And he was certain Zepar could sense it.

"Enough of your perverse games," Focalor spat at him. "If I see you anywhere near here again, Ashtaroth will know of it. She will not be as forgiving as I am."

"Or as weak."

Zepar chuckled as he lightly leapt up from the table, straightening his wrinkled clothes. Whatever trace of Tsuzuki Ukyou had seen in him was gone, even though the features were nearly identical. It took more than just the right shapes in the right places and proportions to make a believable facsimile.

For his part, Focalor felt an uncharacteristic and unwelcome dread settle in his stomach as he watched to make sure Zepar left. This was a development he hadn't expected, and certainly couldn't risk. He would have to act quickly if he didn't want to lose his chance. But he wasn't sure he was ready.

* * *

Even with Kojirou and Kotarou's advance warning, it still came as something of a shock, upon returning to Meifu, to have Todoroki's and his agents' faces be the first Hisoka saw.

"Grab her before she can disappear," the chief said as K sprang through the portal.

Her eyes went wide, her ears pinned back. She tried to pass through the floor, but a strong hand pinning a fuda to her back and grabbing her by the scruff of the neck kept her solid and stuck. "Hey, don't hurt her!" Natsume said, but another Peacekeeper was keeping him from taking more than a step toward K.

With a pistol and sword trained on him by two different Peacekeepers, Hisoka didn't feel he had any choice but to surrender. "Is that really necessary?" he said to Todoroki, as Endo picked the kitten up roughly. "She's just a cat."

"Seeing as this _cat_ was the one who opened the illegal portal that allowed you into Gensoukai," Todoroki answered him with far too much satisfaction for Hisoka's liking, "yes, I would say we are justified in taking every precaution. Which is the least of what I would like to do with you." Though his words may have been meant for Hisoka, it was Nonomiya and Kazuma, coming through the portal behind him, that Todoroki reserved his glare for. "To ensure that you don't summon any beings from that world into ours. But if you can be reasonable, Mr. Kurosaki, and submit to coming with us peacefully, perhaps restraints will not be necessary."

"Go peacefully to what?" Hisoka said.

And didn't like the smile Todoroki returned him. "Interrogation. The two of you are under arrest."

"I'm sorry, Kurosaki," said Konoe, where he stood next to a silently furious Watari and Wakaba. (There must have been a certain amount of coercion involved in opening the portal to retrieve Hisoka, judging by the looks those two wore.) "But in this matter Chief Todoroki has just cause to take you into custody. You entered Gensoukai without permission, and when you knew full well that travel there was forbidden. The fact that K abandoned her charge to help you represents a serious breach of protocol."

"I don't see why I need to be _interrogated,_ then," Hisoka said. "You already know what happened and I don't deny doing it."

"Alas," said Todoroki, "what we have yet to ascertain is what went on on the _other_ side of that portal. Whether you obtained for yourself any new shikigami, perhaps, and what sorts of . . . side effects we should expect when you summon them."

"If you're asking about Kurikara, why don't you just come out and say so! Yes, I won him, and I've the right to summon him as my guardian if the need arises!"

Looking around the room, that had apparently been the wrong thing to say. Watari held the bridge of his nose as he shook his lowered head. Konoe's and Wakaba's expressions were more sympathetic, if shocked and displeased that Hisoka had chosen to confess so readily to Todoroki.

But what was Hisoka to do? Okay, so maybe Todoroki's provocative style brought out the worst in him, but everyone was going to find out sooner or later. And, travel bans aside, it wasn't illegal to obtain new shikigami. That was, unless new restrictions he wasn't aware of had been announced while he was in Gensoukai.

But that wasn't why Todoroki wanted Hisoka in his custody. He could feel it from the man, and saw on Konoe's face that he was worried about the same thing. It wasn't just Hisoka's connection to Kurikara Todoroki was interested in anymore, or even matters to do with Tsuzuki. His suspicions had turned to nearer threats. Like a repeat of Hisoka's failure with Rikugou. But whether Todoroki suspected anything regarding Yatonokami, Hisoka couldn't yet be sure. He would have to feel the Peacekeeping chief out. Maybe an interrogation wasn't the worst thing for him at present, come to think of it.

"Kurosaki will be happy to answer any questions you may have, Chief Todoroki," Tatsumi piped up, with a hard look at Hisoka to keep his trap shut. "But I remind you, he is entitled to have council present—"

"I don't believe this," Endo muttered, but Todoroki held up a hand to silence him.

"In that case, I offer my services," came a voice from behind them, where the now-closed portal had been. And no one seemed more surprised than the other Peacekeeping officers present that Nonomiya had offered to defend Hisoka. "I was there, too," she reminded them. "I can corroborate Kurosaki's statement."

"Which is why you will be participating in this interrogation, too," Todoroki said. "Not as council, but as co-conspirator."

Nonomiya opened her mouth to protest, and even Watari and Konoe seemed about to jump to her defense. After all, it was on Todoroki's order that she had gone into Gensoukai—no longer as a Summons liaison who deserved to be watched, but as a Peacekeeper with a mission. Todoroki may as well have slapped Nonomiya across the face in front of all her peers for the disrespect he had shown her.

But before any argument could erupt, Tatsumi said: " _I_ will accompany Kurosaki to this debrief. If not as council, then as his immediate supervisor. You have my word," he added with a glare at the Peacekeeping chief, "that I will not interfere in your questioning, so long as your officers treat Kurosaki with due civility."

Todoroki hmpfed at that. "So long as Kurosaki returns the favor." But he conceded to Tatsumi coming along, even if it was clearly against his wishes.

"Can I come too?" Natsume said.

"I really don't think that's a good—"

"Come on! You're going to interrogate a cat! Any of you pigs even know how to _speak_ cat?" A quick glance around the assembled officers, who couldn't help but snicker at his question, told Natsume all he needed to know. But just in case that didn't convince them . . . "Besides, I've been away from K's influence for so long, I might not be able to control myself. Who knows, I might have some demons left in me—"

"Fine," Todoroki growled. "You can translate for your furry friend. Now, can we move this along, before the entire Summons Division decides to join us?"

But before he could be shuffled too far toward the door, Hisoka felt Tatsumi grab his arm. Even if it was only for a moment, and even if the secretary risked nothing else before the Peacekeepers, still Hisoka felt the urging he sent through that touch. And understood it, clear as a bell.

A silent plea, for Hisoka to keep quiet where anything remotely regarding snakes or Hisoka's own past was concerned.

* * *

No sooner did she cross the barrier between the Imaginary World and Meifu than Kazuma swooned. It felt like something foreign was being crammed into every part of her body, and no part more so than her head, which seemed it would split from the pressure. She thought her tolerance for physical pain was high, but this tried her to her limits.

She managed to bite down on her scream and steady herself on her feet, but her vision was blurred by black spots and flashes of light. Still, she recognized enough of the smell of the place—like hot electronics with a faint, background twinge of chemicals—to know she must be in one of Watari's labs. Voices were talking over each other. She could make out Todoroki's clearly, though, saying something about interrogation and Kurosaki being under arrest.

Then everyone was moving. And Nonomiya was saying her name, though it felt like her voice was trying to reach Kazuma from the other side of a wall. She felt her partner's hand on her arm—

And jerked away. Not even sure herself why she'd done it. Only it felt as though Nonomiya had just given her an electric shock, one big enough to make something inside her jump.

"Are you okay?" Nonomiya asked, just as the pain subsided enough for Kazuma's surroundings to come back into focus.

She straightened. "Yeah. Just a splitting headache. Must be from the change of pressure." Though for some reason, Kazuma thought she could really go for a cigarette. She hadn't felt that particular craving for a couple of decades.

By the look on her face, it seemed Nonomiya wasn't quite buying it. "You don't look so hot. I mean—" Nonomiya caught herself when she realized how that might sound.

Which Kazuma just laughed off. "I mean it, Kochou. I'll be fine. Just need to hydrate, is all."

"That's good," Nonomiya said with a glance around, "because the chief wants to question us about the mission. We need to go, Shin."

Now Kazuma saw her peers, milling uneasily about her, waiting for her and Nonomiya to get a move on. Kochou reached out as if to offer her arm in support—but reluctantly thought better of it.

And Kazuma knew then that she wouldn't be able to pretend this away. This pressure in her head wasn't some temporary headache; it was her new reality. This wasn't going to change. And Nonomiya knew that too.

* * *

"I suppose you're going to want us to work together now," Kurikara said without lifting his head when he felt the other come into the room.

He could hear Rikugou's smile as the Astrologer said, "That _would_ be helpful, yes. Now that we serve the same master, it would do no good for us to remain at odds. And, indeed, I hope you can come to realize that I never saw you as my enemy."

Kurikara couldn't help but laugh at that. He couldn't believe that Rikugou saw those around him, even his own peers, as anything _but_ opponents to be bested. It had been ages since he'd sat face-to-face with the Astrologer, but he remembered how frustrating the man could be. Every interaction with him was carefully measured. One always had to be wary of falling into philosophical traps. It was worse than dealing with Sohryuu. Whatever Sohryuu may say to you, at least you knew he meant what he said, and nothing more.

"I know you set me up," Kurikara said as Rikugou set a box down on the table between them, and opened it up. "Once you found out just what Kurosaki was carrying around, you knew I wouldn't be able to defeat him."

"Oh?" Rikugou said disinterestedly. But what Kurikara heard was, "Just what do you plan to do about that?"

And Kurikara knew as well as he did that there was nothing he could do. Now.

"You had no right to manipulate me like that—"

"And if I hadn't, would our world not still be in the throes of war? Did bringing Hisoka to you, making you his shikigami, not put an end to our useless fighting? Would you really hold it against me, that I stopped you from making another terrible mistake you would never forgive yourself for?"

Kurikara silently fumed. He was right of course. Somehow Rikugou always was. And Kurikara hated him for it, even now. It wasn't fair. "Do you ever get tired of being right all the time?"

"Every now and then I think I would like to know what it feels like to be genuinely surprised, just once," Rikugou mused. "But generally, no. I don't tire of it."

"That was a rhetorical question, asshole," Kurikara grumbled.

Rikugou only smiled silently at the jab, and removed the two lidded bowls from within the box.

"Have a little faith in Hisoka," he told the dragon instead, as usual cutting to the heart of what really troubled Kurikara. "You don't have to like him, or what he is. But give him a chance to surprise you. We may not be able to overcome our natures, but _they_ can. If given the right nourishment."

 _I know_ , Kurikara wanted to say. But there was too much history wrapped up in those simple words, it seemed insufficient to voice them.

"Now!" Rikugou flipped over the open box, transforming it into a Go board. "What do you say to a quick game? I'll even let you be black."

"I think I know by now not to play games of skill with a fortune-teller," Kurikara said with disdain. But he scooted closer to the table anyway, and took the bowl of white stones.

* * *

 **Notes:** _So, lots of stuff going on in this chapter. I've taken a lot of artistic license, combining elements of different religious traditions to try to answer why in the first place Hisoka survived an attack that, by all accounts, should have destroyed him. Kurikara as the wisdom sword of Fudo Myo-o (very briefly name-dropped in the manga) that cuts away sin/delusion is primarily a Buddhist concept, as is the mythical city of Shambhala. Kurikara Ryuu-Oh coiled around and chowing down on the sword he embodies (or the sword embodying his foe, depending on the version of the story) is a common image, and one that inspired me in the battle scene in Chapter 22._

 _In Shinto, Yatonokami are fearsome gods but of nature, therefore probably amoral (neither good nor evil). But the serpent also represents the delusions (or poisons or attachments) of anger and hatred in Buddhism, and this can be echoed in how it is portrayed in the manga as pursuing a vendetta against the Kurosakis. I use "sin" in connection with Yatonokami in the sense that it embodies those poisons of the soul. It's a more endemic sense of the word, as opposed to karmic sin born of deeds. "Abomination" might be another good word for it, in the sense of "hated thing" (although Hisoka kinda fits the more modern definition of "freak of nature" too)._

 _Chaos itself might be interpreted as an amoral, natural force, but clearly its effects on Gensoukai are seen as being evil, as it causes others to sin and gains nourishment from that. Much like how a black hole just does what its physics make it do, but could be seen by its victims as a malevolent thing with agency. I'm totally extrapolating that Touda is somehow "made of" chaos. Chaos, in the sense of primordial disorder, often takes the form of a great serpent in mythology, like Tiamat or Apep or Orochi. Apep in particular must be perpetually battled and his destructive powers contained, not unlike Touda with his visor, or Yatonokami being sealed within the Kurosaki male heirs._

 _Rikugou's calling Shungei a "Daughter of the Dragon" refers to the nine Sons of the Dragon of Chinese mythology, one of which is Suanni, or lion-dragon, of which "Shungei" is the Japanese reading. I like to think the Dragon in this scenario is Kurikara, but that's mainly because he laments for his lost "children" in the manga, and wants to get justice for them. But what form these children take—they might be swords or subjects—remains a mystery._

 _In Go, the player who is regarded as weaker plays as black and moves first. So Rikugou may sound like he's being gracious letting Kurikara make the first move, but Kurikara doesn't take it that way._


	25. Welcome home

It didn't take long for the truth to come out: that Natsume couldn't "speak cat" any more than anyone else in Enma-cho.

But he did understand K on an uncanny enough level to reassure Todoroki that the cat had not conspired against Enma in any way by opening the portal into Gensoukai for Hisoka. It had been purely a favor for a friend in need. Hisoka had come to him for help as well, and Natsume assured the Peacekeepers that if he was sorry for anything, it was that he had not been a greater help to Hisoka in breaking the rules.

Which didn't help Hisoka's case, and didn't let the other two off the hook either. Natsume and K were dismissed, awaiting disciplinary action, and Todoroki rubbed a temple in frustration when Endo escorted them out. It didn't take an empath to see how much the two were distrusted by Peacekeeping in particular, if not the Judgment Bureau as a whole. They would only fall under greater scrutiny now that Todoroki knew K was savvy enough with computers to bypass the tengu and open her own portal into Gensoukai.

But if being watched more closely put Natsume's plan to hack Mother on ice for a while, that might turn out to be a good thing. Hisoka didn't want to be associated with any plan that revolved around keeping Muraki alive. If anything, he wanted to be the one who got the credit for putting that monster in the ground.

It didn't take a genius to see that Hisoka was Todoroki's real prize, either. But at least K had nothing to say about what had happened in Kurikara's realm—that is, nothing anyone, not even Natsume, could understand.

"Now," the Peacekeeping chief began afresh with a deep breath, "let's get to the real heart of the issue. As I understand things, my officers," that said with a glare in the direction of Kazuma and Nonomiya, who were awaiting their turns to speak at the far side of the table, "though they reached the Floating Desert first, were unable to stop you from challenging Kurikara again. And this time, against all odds, you managed to beat him and win him as your guardian. Is that correct?"

"It is." Hisoka didn't see what good it would do to beat around the bush. And, anyway, he wasn't sorry.

"So. After failing to control _one_ devastatingly powerful shikigami in the field, you thought it wise to go back and get yourself one that was even _more_ destructive and notoriously impossible to command."

"Pardon the interruption," Tatsumi said from the corner of the interrogation room, where he leaned against the wall as if a fly upon it, "but this isn't a trial. There's no one here for whom you need to _prove_ Kurosaki's guilt. Ask him your questions, take his statement for your records, and let us all be done with this witch hunt."

"What I am trying to ascertain," said the chief, turning in his chair toward Tatsumi, "is whether or not Kurosaki needs to be locked up. For his own good as well as all of ours. None of us wants to risk a repeat of what happened with that _bird_. I need to assess the situation so that His Lordship may rule on how best to proceed."

"How do you know King Enma didn't _want_ Kurosaki to have Kurikara?" said Kazuma.

Surprising everyone, including herself. She hadn't meant to speak, let alone those words, but they just slipped out. "His Highness has the ability to prevent Kurosaki from physically crossing the threshold into Gensoukai," she went on when no one else said anything. "He's done it to other shinigami in the past. If he wanted to ensure that Kurosaki couldn't confront Kurikara ever again, he would have acted long ago."

Hisoka waited for someone to state what was so obvious to him. Never mind that Kazuma had been suffering from a splitting headache ever since returning from Gensoukai—and trying rather unsuccessfully to hide that behind the cup of tea she was currently nursing. She may not have shown outward signs of possession, as Terazuma had—and, under any other circumstances, Hisoka might have been curious to know why that was—but he could sense the Black Lion's familiar _qi_ within her aura. Even if he was the only one who could. Surely Nonomiya knew what was going on, too, but so far she wasn't saying anything remotely close to the subject.

Hisoka thought Kazuma made a fair point. But Todoroki must not have felt she was helping, because he asked his two officers to leave the room. His reminder that he would speak with them when he was done with Hisoka was full of warning. It probably hadn't helped Kazuma's own case to speak up for him like that, but Hisoka suspected she hadn't meant to. It was Kokushungei who had come to this defense.

"You will disregard Ms. Kazuma's opinion," Todoroki said to the two Summons officers when they were alone. "Obviously she does not speak for our King. Lord Enma has a duty to protect this realm, and a creature of Kurikara's calibre, in the hands of a reckless novice—who has a history of bad judgment calls himself, I might add—threatens its safety directly."

"Then ask me to summon him," Hisoka said. "Not in battle. Just as . . . a test. You want to assess whether I can command Kurikara? That's the surest way to do it."

It seemed from his scowl that not even Tatsumi thought that was a good idea. _Even he doubts me. Does no one believe I'm strong enough?_

"So you can set the dragon on me?" Todoroki sneered. "I don't think so. Safer to put a lock on you, to prevent you from summoning any shiki at all."

Like K had put on Natsume, Hisoka thought, imagining violet lines like those under his partner's skin superimposed over the red characters of his curse. His whole body crisscrossed with conflicting spells. Never mind that such a spell as Todoroki had in mind would make all the trouble Hisoka had gone through to obtain Kurikara and Rikugou be for nothing. Would he even survive it? That is, how would it react to the yatonokami within him? Yatonokami wasn't just some parasitic shiki Hisoka could release, or pass on to someone else like Shungei had been passed on to Terazuma. It was an indelible part of him, whether Todoroki liked that or not.

But Todoroki didn't know. At least, not for now. If the yatonokami had been among the Peacekeeping chief's thoughts, Hisoka was sure either he or the snake would have felt it.

Yatonokami was very much on Tatsumi's thoughts, however. Hisoka could sense it, if nothing else, in how quick the secretary was to join them at the table. "A lock will not be happening. For one, you would need an order approved by the High Court—"

"I'm sure one could easily be obtained," Todoroki smiled back, clearly loving that he had ruffled the secretary's feathers. "Once I make it clear to His Majesty the danger that Kurosaki's new friend poses."

"And if you lock away Kurosaki's ability to summon his guardians, there's no telling what other skills of his will be compromised."

"Ah, but isn't that the point? Haven't his so-called 'skills' been a problem from the very beginning of his tenure here? His empathy has proved to be more a liability to his casework than an asset, and what other potential he's demonstrated has remained woefully underdeveloped over the last five years."

Hisoka could have reminded the chief that it was his _reibaku_ that had freed Tsuzuki from a high-level demonic possession, a feat shinigami far more senior than him were unable to accomplish. But given the climate in the room, it didn't seem wise to bring that up.

Tatsumi said for him, "You underestimate Kurosaki's value to King Enma at your own peril, Todoroki—"

"And you, Mr. Tatsumi, overestimate his worth to the functioning of your own department. I keep hearing that this partnership he had with Tsuzuki had been the most successful one yet, but more shit hit the fan after Kurosaki joined the team than in all Tsuzuki's previous six decades of service combined."

"That's because of _Muraki!_ Not me!" Hisoka rose to his feet, tapping his finger angrily on the tabletop between them. " _He's_ been the instigator of all this! If I hadn't been here when Muraki showed up, if I hadn't been here to mitigate all the damage he's tried to do to Tsuzuki over the past six years, there's no telling what Tsuzuki may have done, or what would have happened to him—"

"And where is he now, hm? Abandoned his post, gone radio silent—no way for any of us to know what secrets of this world he may be spilling out there to the living, or what laws he's broken! And now Muraki has Tsuzuki in his custody, and, we can be damn sure, under his control. So, you're absolutely right, Kurosaki. What a bang-up job you've done, keeping Tsuzuki out of trouble."

Hisoka's resolve withered under Todoroki's slow round of applause, and he sat back down hard, his arguments having abandoned him. If not his anger, and his hatred for the man sitting across from him.

Whether it was all his own, or whether Yatonokami was also seething on his behalf, wanting to sink his fangs into the Peacekeeping chief, he could not tell. At least Todoroki was not also an empath, but Hisoka would have to be careful not to project that particular emotion. Tatsumi had warned him to give the chief no reason to even begin to suspect the yatonokami's existence. Hisoka willed himself to take deep breaths. Told himself it would be less than helpful if he gave Todoroki even one more reason to dislike him.

Besides, Tatsumi was projecting enough hatred for the both of them, even if he did not let it leak into his tone. "Is this really necessary? Kurosaki's fitness to be a shinigami is not the matter at hand—"

"Perhaps it should be," said Todoroki with a nonchalance belying his smug glee. "Why he's here cuts to the quick of the _matter at hand_. Ever since he arrived he's shown himself to be defiant of authority, with little respect for the rules. Poking his nose into where it doesn't belong. He's the product of an aristocratic family, Tatsumi, in a meritocratic age. He seems to think he _deserves_ to have things handed to him—"

"I do not," Hisoka began, but Todoroki continued over the top of him.

"This latest debacle with Gensoukai only proves it. Kurosaki is so _special,_ the rules don't apply to him. He's so _special,_ he alone can handle a shikigami so powerful it's been masterless its entire existence. And because he's special, he believes he can get away with it, without having to face any of the consequences of his actions."

"And what have I hurt by gaining Kurikara?" Hisoka demanded to know. If anything, his experience in Gensoukai had taught him that the two of them joining forces might be an improvement, perhaps even a solution to many of the problems that plagued that world. "Nothing."

" _Yet,_ " Todoroki finished. "A record which is sure to be shattered the very _moment_ you summon him."

"Again, a theory that remains untested and unproven," Tatsumi reproached him, with a shake of the head.

So Todoroki turned in his chair and glared up at the secretary, even if what he said next was meant for Hisoka, and pointedly. "What I still don't understand is how Kurosaki managed to win Kurikara in the first place. Everyone else who's tried has been turned away before they had a chance to challenge him, or were destroyed outright. Now, _Kurosaki_ might believe he's uniquely qualified, but I don't believe it for one second. So."

He turned back, and his level stare seemed to press against Hisoka's mental barriers, like a peeper pressed up against a tinted window pane, straining to see in.

"How exactly did you beat the unbeatable Kurikara?"

Hisoka glanced up at Tatsumi for support, but the secretary's resigned expression indicated that was a question Todoroki had every right to ask and receive an answer to.

"I . . . I'm not sure," Hisoka said.

Earning him a "Bullshit" from Todoroki and a harsh slap on the table.

"I'm not lying." At least, Hisoka told himself, not in any way that mattered. "The way shikigami determine when someone has bested them depends on their own nature and the person they're testing. If you want to know how I won, you'd have to ask Kurikara himself."

Todoroki glanced at Tatsumi, but the secretary just shrugged.

"I can tell you that Kurikara's goal was to test my limits," Hisoka offered up. "Physical, intellectual, and emotional. He wanted to see how I would react under fire. Literally, in this case. My empathy was surely a deciding factor." There, that wasn't half a lie, was it? "But, like I said, only he had the final say."

"And your empathy," said a skeptical Todoroki, "which was good enough to help you win, wasn't good enough to read what that final say was based on?"

A fair point, Hisoka had to admit. But one he could answer without letting anything slip that he didn't want Todoroki to know.

"He told me he saw what kind of person I truly was," Hisoka said, meeting the other's stare evenly, "but more importantly, what kind of person I wasn't, and that gave him enough reason to want to fight for me."

Todoroki snorted at that. "I don't believe it."

But Hisoka really didn't care if he did or not. That, at least, had been the truth. He shrugged. "Shikigami like to speak in riddles. Doesn't mean it didn't mean something deeply significant to him. What can I say? I guess my persistence just finally wore him down."

"I want a full statement of all of this, in writing," Todoroki said to both of them. "I want to see it typed up and on my desk first thing when I come in tomorrow morning."

"You'll have it," Tatsumi assured. "Is Kurosaki free to go?"

"For now. But I want him remanded to desk duty until I have time to confer with King Enma over appropriate punishment. Any trips he decides to take to the Living World must be chaperoned by a senior official. And absolutely no contact with living cases until you hear otherwise from me or my superiors."

Hisoka was about to protest that the sentence was unduly harsh—not to mention, unrealistic—but Tatsumi said, "It's a deal," before he could get a word out.

* * *

"God, I need a smoke," Kazuma growled as she and Nonomiya awaited their turn in the hot seats. "I would ask if you could bum me one, but I know you don't smoke, Kochou."

"Nasty habit to have on long flights." But Nonomiya's words were heavy with her concern. She lowered her voice, tightening her hands into fists as she pushed them determinedly into her trouser pockets. "Don't you think you should tell Chief? I mean, you can't hope to hide this from him for long."

"He didn't seem to notice before."

"Yeah, but in all fairness, he was busy grilling Kurosaki."

"It doesn't show, does it?"

"As long as you keep your hair over your ears," Nonomiya said, as Kazuma fussed to take her advice, "and no one looks you too closely in the eye, then no. I wouldn't be able to tell myself if I weren't there. And if I hadn't tou—" Nonomiya swallowed, and tried again. "If I hadn't noticed how you reacted to me when we got back."

There was pain in that admission, pain that, though she tried to bury it, Kazuma could still hear. "But he's going to find out, Shin. And the longer it takes, the more angry he's going to be when he does."

"Find out about what?"

Kazuma's hopes sank, and she could feel Nonomiya tense beside her. Even the cat inside reacted—with an intense revulsion that made the hairs on the back of Kazuma's neck stand up. "What do you want, Endo?"

"Oh, nothing." His smarmy smile said otherwise, of course. "Just couldn't help overhearing. Chief wanted me to come get you guys for your debrief, but it sounds like you don't plan on telling him _everything_ that happened over there."

 _You careless . . . Just how much did he hear?_ The Black Lion was ready to grab Endo by the scruff of the neck and make sure he kept his big mouth shut, one way or another.

Luckily for both of them, Nonomiya possessed a cooler head.

"Shin broke her arm," she said, grabbing Kazuma's arm without any forewarning and making her hiss. It felt like something was raising itself to its full height in Kazuma's mind, and her skull wasn't large enough to contain it. But she resisted the urge to yank her arm away. The better to sell it.

"Fighting off giant spiders," Nonomiya said.

That got a sadistic little laugh out of Endo. "Sometimes the spider squishes you, eh, Shin?"

"Whatever," she grumbled, embarrassed to realize she was blushing. She did pull away then. "I knew the chief would get on my ass about filing an injury claim against Gensoukai, and _that_ would just piss off what tengu are still talking to us. Plus, I figured he's got enough on his plate what with Kurosaki getting himself a dragon—"

"True. You're probably already at the top of the chief's shit list for failing to prevent that," Endo just had to rub it in a little deeper. "Glad I'm not you."

But he seemed to buy Nonomiya's story, and the two women could breathe a bit easier when he walked away.

At least for the meantime. Now the hard part began, Kazuma thought. Lying to her boss about the big, black ball of hair-trigger, nicotine-deprived furry rage that she had picked up in the Imaginary World.

* * *

Imai couldn't help staring when they released the kid from his interview. It wasn't just how the other officers seemed to tense when he went by, either, as though they were waiting for something to explode from within him at any moment.

 _So. Kurosaki Hisoka, we meet again._ He didn't look like much. A skinny kid of better-than-thou bearing who barely looked the sixteen years of age his file said he'd been at death, but carried himself with a do-not-touch vibe that could only in part be attributed to the angst of adolescence. He hadn't been around long enough to be a paranoid old man mentally, so Imai could only guess that it was from some private weight. He saw it with guys on the force who had seen more than their fair share of violent and sexual crimes. After a while, being exposed to that much of the worst of humanity started to follow you around, like your own personal ghost.

But it was neither that nor the reaction of his colleagues that made Imai stare. It was the light hair and green eyes. Even if they weren't normal for a Japanese, kids these days dyed their hair all sorts of shades and wore contacts to change their eye color. No, it was the fact that these particular traits, and all the rest, were familiar to him. Imai was _certain_ he had met Kurosaki before. And not just in passing on the street. There had to have been some incident that fixed that face and those eyes in his mind. . . .

God, but he just knew that was going to bug the hell out of him. He'd be lucky if he got any work done the rest of the day.

One thought in particular wouldn't leave Imai alone: If he had met Kurosaki at or around the moment of his death—if it was true what his coworker had said, that Kurosaki had essentially killed him—wouldn't just seeing the kid's face trigger some sort of flashback or post-trauma anxiety? The fact that it didn't was curious, and all the incentive Imai needed to start digging. Perhaps there was a way he could resolve this conundrum, if he could somehow just access Kurosaki's file on the Livertaker case. . . .

* * *

It didn't surprise Hisoka one bit when, instead of turning toward Summons on their way back to the office, Tatsumi led him in the other direction, toward Watari's labs.

They found the scientist in the back, in one of the infirmary rooms, bent over a laptop. "Just putting the last touches on some wards. . . ." 003 walked in circles on top of a cot, looking for a comfy place to settle down. "And—there!" Watari announced with one final keystroke. "We should have total privacy. Any Peacekeepers listening in will only hear white noise and whale song."

"Why whale song?" Hisoka said, but Watari only said "Why not?"

Tatsumi knew better than to ask when it came to his old colleague. "Why don't you have a seat, Kurosaki."

"Sure," Hisoka said a bit uncertainly, but he did as asked. 003 immediately hopped over for pets, and to see if he was hiding any treats in his pockets. "But can I ask what this is all about?"

"I think you know," said the secretary, meeting Hisoka's eyes.

Thankfully Watari said before Hisoka had to come up with an answer: "This is largely my fault. I shouldn't have let you go without providing you some sort of context for what you saw in my memories. That was no way to spring something as delicate as that on a person—"

"You mean that I'm part Yatonokami?"

The other two could only stare at Hisoka behind their respective glasses. "Y-you figured that out . . ." Watari said, blinking.

Hisoka shrugged. "I had a lot of time to think about it over in Gensoukai, and what it might mean for me going forward. Rikugou convinced me the quickest way to get answers was to confront Yatonokami directly, so I did. We talked, and it showed me everything. How it made me, what it had planned to do with me—had I lived, that is."

"That's horrific, Bon!"

"I can't believe you're speaking of it as though you're okay with all this," said Tatsumi, folding his arms over his chest. "When you ran off to Gensoukai so soon after finding out, we feared you would try to destroy yourself. Watari said you were in a state of shock when you left him."

"It wouldn't be the first time someone tried to commit suicide by shikigami," Watari confirmed.

"Why would I do that?" Was that how they saw him—as some fragile kid who couldn't handle learning the truth? "I _was_ shocked," Hisoka said with a shrug. "I was angry, and confused. I didn't want to believe that all this time I had no idea what I really was, let alone that I was some sort of hybrid monster. But I got over it."

"But how _does_ one just get over something like that?" said Watari. "You've seen what just being half demon did to Tsuzuki."

"Yes! Exactly! I saw how he carried the blame for that around on his shoulders, like it was somehow his fault. Like he had somehow _asked_ to be born that way. I'm certain a lot of this mess we're in now is because he couldn't handle Muraki reminding him of that. But I refuse to buy into the same nonsense that this is something I have to be ashamed of."

Or maybe it was that caving to the pressure to be ashamed, to feel guilty for what he could neither choose nor control, felt like handing Muraki another victory. Muraki had enjoyed taunting him at every turn, trying to make Hisoka believe that he would never be anything but a pawn in other people's schemes, that he had no control over his own fate. And Hisoka was sick and tired of handing that man wins.

Tatsumi, however, wasn't so quick to take Hisoka's word for it. "You're not angry?"

"Of course I'm angry." For a moment, Hisoka had thought about denying it. "But there's no use getting upset about my condition. It's not like it's reversible. If anything, I'm a little pissed off that it's taken me twenty-two years to learn the truth about myself. And that I seem to be the last one around here to know about it."

Watari and Tatsumi exchanged a look at that, and Hisoka thought he could detect an unspoken "told you so" in it.

"You're not the last to know," Tatsumi assured him in a quiet voice. "Watari and I have told no one else what state we found you in the night we brought you back here. As far as we know, no one outside this room knows about you and Yatonokami."

"Other than Rikugou, that is," Watari put in, "if he put you up to confronting it. And whoever else you might have let in on the secret while you were in Gensoukai."

Which turned out to be quite a lot of people, now that Hisoka thought back on it. Everyone who was gathered in Kurikara's throne room when he summoned Yatonokami. Which included K—though he was pretty confident the secret would remain safe with her. Kazuma and Nonomiya? No, Hisoka was fairly sure they had missed that spectacle. At least, they had made no mention of it when they met up with him over there. But if somehow they did find out, could he trust them to keep quiet about it?

"We can't say for sure about Enma," Watari went on, echoing the direction of Hisoka's thoughts. "It stands to reason that if Yatonokami's presence had been detectable at the time of your judgment, then he knew exactly what he was signing us all up for when he made you a shinigami."

 _It stands to reason. . . ._ Shungei had thought Kurikara was part of Enma's plan for him, too. Could it really be that all this time Hisoka thought he was forging his own future, he _was_ really just fulfilling a plan that had been laid out for him years ago? Damn it, he was _not_ just a passenger on the way to his own destiny!

Tatsumi said, briefly meeting Watari's eyes: "There's a good chance Enma would know the details of our investigation of your parents. I'm sorry, Kurosaki. He may have drawn conclusions from our findings the way we did. The same way I believe the chief suspects the truth, but understands that what he doesn't know can't be used against him. Or against his employees."

Hisoka knew only a little of that case himself. Regrettably, as it concerned his own family. When he was called back from Gensoukai the first time, he was informed of his parents' deaths. The details, however, had been glossed over. In his shock, at the time, he hadn't thought to ask for the full run-down. "So, even then you suspected Yatonokami might have had a hand in my conception."

"To put it simply," Tatsumi affirmed.

"But we weren't about to blurt it out to you when what we had were no more than suspicions," Watari said.

"But it was about _me_! I had a right to know! Watari, aren't _you_ always saying it's always better to know?"

"And what good would hunches have done you, huh? It's not like any of that stuff was good news. Honestly, we didn't think it would matter whether you knew the truth or not. With your father and uncle dead, as well as the child Rui was carrying, we thought that particular yatonokami was eradicated from the Living World."

"Or, at least, weakened enough to where it no longer posed an immediate threat," Tatsumi said. "It had occupied that house and the land around it long enough an ambient trace of it was bound to remain, but it had no host body left to possess."

"We weren't thinking that it could still be viable inside a dead person," said Watari. "We didn't have any evidence at that point to suggest the part of Yatonokami inside of you remained conscious after your death."

"But you did know it was there?" Hisoka couldn't help the note of desperation that had entered his voice.

"Not for certain," said Tatsumi. "We knew you were born to be the carrier of its curse into the next generation. It wasn't until the night you summoned Rikugou that we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Yatonokami didn't just intend for you to be a carrier, but that it had actually made you a vessel in which to hide a piece of its self."

Hisoka was glad to be sitting then, as it felt like the walls were spinning around him. The whale song didn't help matters either, even if it was set at an almost inaudible volume.

The details about his own person were nothing new to him. That wasn't what he found so upsetting. But learning that other people knew such intimate information years before he found out felt like being stripped naked in front of an audience. To speak nothing of the details about his family that had never been shared with him before now. It was _his_ family. How could no one have told him? "What did you mean, what my mother was carrying? Are you saying she was pregnant when you were sent to investigate? Was that _why_ you were sent to investigate?!"

"Her soul had overstayed its time on earth," Tatsumi confirmed, in a low voice filled with regret. "We were sent to investigate the cause and bring her back with us. Investigating the cause of your father's illness, as he professed it to be, was secondary to our main objective. We arrived to find your mother had been suffering the effects of a two-year-long pregnancy. The . . . child," he struggled with the appropriateness of the word, "had been keeping her body alive . . . barely . . . but her mind . . ."

Tatsumi trailed off when Hisoka buried his face in his hands. It was clear he didn't need to finish the thought. Hisoka could envision it as though he had been there himself. As if the yatonokami had placed the memory directly in his head. In a sense, it had, when it showed him everything it had had planned. Its plans within plans—in case someone, like Muraki, interfered. He could feel Yatonokami's glee as his own, as it tortured his mother with her own regrets, terrified her nightly until madness was her only refuge.

Hisoka thought his own life had been a nightmare, but he only knew the half of what it could have been. Those images would haunt his sleep as long as he existed. But not today. 003's gentle hooting pulled Hisoka away from them, and he opened his eyes to see her big golden ones staring into his with concern that was no less human for coming from an owl.

He was not alone, she reminded him. He did not have to sink into that pit of despair Yatonokami had prepared for him because he had other avenues of escape. He had people who cared.

" _It_ did that to her," Hisoka said when he had recovered enough to speak. "I was dead and it needed to produce an heir. I just can't believe Father would be so cruel as to force her to go through that a second time. Weren't two children enough of a sacrifice to that monster?"

Watari, who had been staring at Hisoka silently with deep sorrow in his eyes, suddenly sat up. "But, Bon, he _didn't_ force it on her. That thing your mother was carrying was not human."

"So? If you want to get technical about it, I'm not sure I qualify either."

"That's not what Watari means," Tatsumi reproached him, but Hisoka wasn't going to apologize for his outrage. They were _his_ parents. He could hate them for their weakness all he wanted.

"What would you know about it?" he said to both of them. "You spent, what, a week or two in that household? Try sixteen years! I know exactly what my parents were capable of—what kind of miserable excuses for human beings they were. And I'm glad they're dead—I'm glad my whole family is, and the curse with them."

"Bon, you don't mean that—"

"Of course I do! When _you're_ raised for the slaughter, by a person incapable of loving his own children as anything other than livestock, then you can tell me what I do or don't mean!"

"But your father _did_ love you!" Watari insisted, though Hisoka wouldn't see it.

He shook his head, wishing he could shut out the words, because if they were true, then all those years . . . "What kind of father shows his love by shutting his son up in a prison, telling him he's a monster, that he's not his son? _Killing_ his own daughter, for God's sake! and then trying to replace her with another child he never even wanted—"

"Is that what you think happened all this time? Bon, your father didn't kill your sister! Your uncle, Iwao, did!"

"He confessed at his judgment," Tatsumi confirmed.

"Your father loved you both so much. If he ever told you he didn't want you, it's because he never wanted you to suffer! He knew what kind of pain you were destined for, being born into that house, a son, an heir to that curse, and he wished to God that he could have spared you everything that went with it. If you could have seen how it tortured him in those last days, how much guilt he carried for being _relieved_ when you died before you could inherit that curse, you wouldn't have the nerve to sit there and accuse him of failing to love you!"

Watari's words succeeded in shaming him, and a glance at Tatsumi, who was staring at his shoes, was even harder to bear. Hisoka may not have felt any judgment from the secretary, but the dark direction of his thoughts was sobering enough. The regret. The guilt. His parents' case had opened some old wound deep within Tatsumi, even if it was too shrouded in shadow for Hisoka to see.

But Hisoka could not let go of his resentment that easily. It was too deeply rooted in his person, and had been growing vigorously for far too long. "It doesn't matter what Father's intentions were. How does that begin to excuse the pain I've had to endure—a lot of it because of him! How could he excuse away how he treated me?"

Watari shrugged. "I can't speak for your father. But maybe he thought it would be easier on you in the long run, if you grew up resenting him, rather than feel betrayed by the folks you cared about most when you reached an age to learn the truth."

Like pinching off a bud before it could freeze in the first hard frost of winter. If Tsuzuki were here, he might have put it in terms like that.

That's what Muraki had done, Hisoka thought. Snipped off the bud that had been his life before it could even begin to come to its awful fruition. And was he supposed to thank Muraki for that? Is that what Hisoka's father had done? Thanked the stranger who had sent his son to an early grave?

He sniffed back tears that refused to come. For all Hisoka had thought he was coming to peace with what he was, there was still a great deal surrounding his life and death that he could not forgive.

Watari was wrong. This resentment wasn't easier. Hisoka would have given anything to go back, to have a memory where he truly felt that he had been loved—and wanted—unconditionally. Even if it was inevitable that love would be betrayed, the memory would still be there. That, at least, would remain genuine and unadulterated, even through death.

"I'm sorry to have put you though this, Kurosaki," Tatsumi finally said, "but I must impress upon you the importance of everything we've discussed here remaining confidential."

"That goes without saying, doesn't it?"

Perhaps feeling that he deserved the sarcasm, Tatsumi let it roll off. "I really do believe you were brought here for a reason. Your recent successes in Gensoukai only strengthen my belief. However, not everyone in Enma-cho views the same set of circumstances the same way. They already distrusted Tsuzuki for his shikigami and will only see your gaining Kurikara as an escalation. They _must not_ know what you are. If the wrong people find out about Yatonokami's involvement, on top of everything else, I fear even Enma won't be able to defend your continued presence here."

"You've been hanging out with the Count too much," Watari told him. "You're starting to sound like him."

But Tatsumi remained as somber as ever. "When a man like Todoroki is allowed as much free rein to exercise his authority as he has been of late, a little paranoia can be healthy. I'm not sure he realizes how much damage he will do the Judgment Bureau if he continues to actively undermine Summons' most powerful agents."

"Or," Watari said, "it could be that's exactly what he intends. In which case, Enma help us all."

* * *

Imai was going to owe Kazuma big. Somehow she had managed to convince the younger Gushoushin to grant him access to the last twelve months of Kurosaki's case history. He would have to find out what kind of cuisine his sempai liked and take her out to a nice restaurant in the Living World. That was, if shinigami did that sort of thing.

And if the information he was looking for wasn't classified or redacted. Once Imai started looking, it didn't take long to realize that the Kurosaki kid, despite his age, had been investigating some cases that were considered a pretty big deal by Enma-cho standards.

Imai, on the other hand, had never felt like a smaller deal than when he was looking at a file where nine out of ten words were blacked out. But the finer details of the cases weren't what interested him anyway. He was looking for dates and places that stood out as significant to him—certain times when Kurosaki would have crossed over into his territory.

He found it in September of the previous year. Kumamoto Prefecture, Kumamoto City. _Bingo. This is the one._

It was one of the dreaded redacted files. Imai didn't have access to the report, or the dossiers that were attached to it. But what _was_ a matter of public record had enough in the way of dates and place names for him to know precisely what it was about. This had been his case, too.

The murdered high school kid, the one who had been best friends with Imai's colleague's son. Left for dead in an alley, mysteriously drained of blood. And the suspect: another student at the same private school, name of Fujisawa, who had supposedly been dead for more than three years before he committed the crime. At the time, Imai had wondered if he was losing his marbles, as none of what he and Asai uncovered during their investigation seemed to make any sense. Since being here, however, Imai was a bit more willing to put down as credible what he had passed off as impossible in life.

He noticed Muraki Kazutaka's name was absent from what of the file was available to him, too, yet it seemed inferences to him or his work could be found everywhere. Knowing that guy's activities were being followed by Meifu too left Imai feeling justified in a way he hadn't felt in a while, alive or dead. _See, Sempai,_ he could imagine Asai might say to him if he were here, _I told you we were on to something big._

A name popped out at Imai—Sacred Heart Catholic Academy—and finally it clicked. Like flicking a switch. No wonder he couldn't _quite_ place Kurosaki's face. If he had just pictured him in a private school blazer . . .

He had interviewed that kid about the murder. And now that Imai knew Kurosaki had been conducting his own investigation on the same people at the same time, right under his and Asai's noses—

 _Son of a bitch. . . . The little brat lied to our faces!_

Imai wasn't sure just then what ticked him off more. That Kurosaki had been actively deceiving him, intentionally obstructing his investigation at every opportunity, and Imai had been none the wiser. Or that the kid who'd done all that was the same kid responsible for Imai's death.

* * *

When Imai asked if she would help him check out Kurosaki's case files, Kazuma had been skeptical. It wasn't going to be easy trying to convince the elder Gushoushin to do her a favor, even if it wasn't for her exactly. He seemed to have lumped Imai in with all his other grudges by association, and Kazuma dreaded telling the former detective that he had a long, upward climb ahead of him if he wanted to get himself on both Gushoushin's good sides.

Luckily for the two of them, however, the elder brother was nowhere to be found when they arrived, and the younger was in good spirits—in more ways than one, it turned out—and didn't mind fulfilling their request.

As Gushoushin got Imai logged in at a terminal, a curious feeling tugged at Kazuma. She would have been at a loss as to how to explain it. Even saying it was a peace officer's intuition didn't quite do it justice. It was more animal than that. Like how she imagined it might feel if she had an identical twin, and something were to happen to that twin miles away.

Then she caught a glimpse of Terazuma in the copy room off the library entrance, and it all clicked.

Her feet carried her over there before she was half aware of what she was doing. Kazuma had planned on telling Terazuma sooner rather than later, only the fear of how he would react holding her back from just popping on down to Summons and getting it over with. How do you break the news to someone that you're dating their ex? Though even that wasn't an entirely appropriate analogy to their situation. It was worse, because Terazuma and Shungei hadn't just shared a relationship. They'd shared a body and a brain—for more than a decade. Kazuma truly had no idea how Terazuma was going to take the news.

But the moment Kazuma came within arm's reach of him, and he turned around from the copy machine, some primal urge inside her took over. The next thing Kazuma knew, she was pressing Terazuma up against the copier, her fingers in his hair, his shirt bunched in her fist, and her tongue halfway to his tonsils.

Terazuma jumped. A squeaky sound like a frightened kitten escaped him. But he was too stunned to do anything but try to make himself smaller against the copy machine.

Kazuma prided herself on her muscle, but Shungei was _strong._ Like a Terminator. The Black Lion resisted letting go, even after the impulse had severed itself from Kazuma's consciousness and her repulsion took over. She wasn't attracted to Hajime! She liked giving him a hard time and all, and didn't have anything against him as a Summons officer, but he was kind of a chauvinistic prick. Not to mention, tasted like cigarettes—and it was _really_ bothering Kazuma how much she was liking and hating that at the same time.

Finally, she managed to break away, and, on instinct, slapped Terazuma across the face.

"The fuck was that for!" he yelped, holding his cheek.

"I'm sorry!" Kazuma was apologizing just as quickly, "it was an automatic response, I didn't mean it—"

"B-but _you_ came on to _me_!"

Then it clicked. Terazuma took a closer look at Kazuma's face—or, to be precise, her eyes—and blinked. "Well, isn't this just perfect. I don't believe it. . . ."

"Trust me, this wasn't how I wanted to tell you. I don't know how I was going to tell you, really," Kazuma amended, "none of this was my idea. It just happened. Though, I guess if I'm honest, it _was_ my fault, I did kinda challenge her—but I didn't know I was asking for _this._ "

"Kuro-chan?" He wasn't speaking to her anymore. And Kazuma was trying not to resent it, but it was really unnerving the way Terazuma spoke _through_ her. Like a demented old man trying to remember if he knew her, and if she was his late wife. "Is that you in there?"

"She's in here, alright." _Otherwise I wouldn't have snogged you for all the tea in China, obviously._ "Sorry for the sneak attack. I didn't think I'd run into you in the library."

"Yeah, well, Gushoushin Junior can sometimes be convinced to let up on the lifetime ban a little if you catch him around Suntory time. Plus, I can't transform and burn down the place if I'm no longer possessed, can I? But _you_ hardly show any outward signs of possession. Other than the eyes. You've definitely got her eyes. Which can only mean—"

"That we're more compatible than you two were?" Kazuma rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah, I guessed as much. Don't take it too personally, though. We're both tough broads, so we have that in common. You just can't hope to compete on that level."

All joking aside, though, it was kind of sad. She could feel Shungei's longing inside her still—not _for_ Terazuma so much as _to be with_ him. To be a _part_ of him. And the frustration that she wasn't and couldn't be. Some of that frustration was even directed at Kazuma, for not knowing just what she was doing when she challenged Shungei to a fight. If Kazuma had ever wondered if shikigami shared the same spectrum of emotions as human beings, she wasn't wondering now. In some ways, they were more intense, as the denizens of the Imaginary World seemed to experience what attributes they embodied to an extreme.

In this case, righteous anger. But also a need to protect. Kazuma had never really thought about it before, that that was Shungei's driving directive when she came bursting out of Terazuma in the form of a black lion. Now she understood: It wasn't an offensive move, but a defensive one, albeit on steroids.

"I'm sorry," Kazuma said again. "I was afraid no matter how I tried to break the news to you, it would hurt."

Terazuma wasn't in the habit of showing his vulnerabilities on his sleeve, and he wasn't about to start now; but there were cracks in the tough-guy veneer, if Kazuma looked hard enough. Maybe she'd pegged him all wrong. At least Shungei's experience of him was giving her a different perspective.

"It's funny," he said, "but when we were sharing a body, I used to dream of finding a way to get rid of her. People aren't meant to share their every thought with another consciousness. It's embarrassing. And annoying."

 _Don't listen to him,_ came the little voice in the back of Kazuma's skull. _I'm an absolute joy to have around. And I don't judge. Well, only when you deserve it._

"But the day after she left. . . ." Terazuma chuckled to himself, but it was melancholic. "You never really know what they mean by 'deafening silence' until you experience it yourself. The same way that people go mad when they spend time in solitary confinement. Part of you thinks 'What could be better than some peace and quiet? No one to disturb you?' Until you find you need the support, or even just the _presence,_ of another soul, and it's not there when you reach for it."

For as long as she had been a shinigami, Kochou had been that person for Kazuma. Now she was out of reach—if only physically. Kazuma never thought twice when she'd given Terazuma a hard time about the tension between him and Kannuki in the past. Now she understood the real pain that had been there, the real barriers. It wasn't funny anymore.

"I suppose I have you to blame for my wanting a cigarette all the time," she said, however, desperate to lighten the mood.

Terazuma snorted at that. "Yeah. Yeah, that would be my fault."

And Kazuma sobered. "Does the pressure ever let up? This feeling like my skull is going to split in two?"

"Not really. But you learn to live with it. Or, you know, whatever you want to call what it is we do. You never get used to transforming either. There's no way to lessen the discomfort of having your body completely rearranged and all the extra bits shunted into another dimension, so it always hurts like hell. You'd think after a while you'd get used to your coworkers seeing you naked—"

"Let me guess," Kazuma grumbled. "Each time feels as fresh as the first time." She was liking what she'd gotten herself into less and less.

"But it's not all bad."

Kazuma had to break it to him, that Terazuma wasn't doing a very good job of selling the _good_ points of shiki possession. So far she'd yet to hear any.

"I know," he said. "I'm really not. I don't know how to explain it, but you'll just have to take my word for it when I say I wish I could do it all over again. As great as it is to be my own person again—"

"And not have to worry about any embarrassing fur-splosions?"

"That. I'd still take her back in a heartbeat if I could. You should use this time to your advantage, Kazuma. It's no use appreciating what you had only after it's gone."

Kazuma could have told him she'd already been doing a lot of that lately. And with Shungei threatening to burst out of her every time she touched Kochou, she was in for a lot more of it for the foreseeable future.

* * *

Desk duty was a surprisingly excruciating punishment. Which was to say, the boredom was almost unbearable, as was the feeling he couldn't shake that he wasn't contributing as much as he should, and Natsume's quips were getting on Hisoka's nerves more than ever. And so far he'd only had to endure a few days of it. He never thought he'd miss having a case so much. But despite the emotional roller coaster they usually took him on, at least he got out for some fresh air, and wasn't stuck looking at the same four walls and faces of his coworkers all day.

With the exception of Tatsumi's. The secretary was curiously absent from the office the last few days.

Perhaps he was fighting Hisoka's case down in Judgment. It wouldn't be the first time. Hisoka would have to get him a nice thank-you present the next time he was in Chijou (whenever he was _allowed_ back to Chijou). Humble and frugal though he may be, Tatsumi still had a taste for fine things, all the more so when someone else was paying for them.

And after their last conversation together in the labs, Hisoka didn't mind Tatsumi's absence. It still didn't feel fair, when Tatsumi knew better than anyone how private one's feelings about their family ought to remain, that Hisoka had had to bare his without any thought of reciprocity. It still didn't sit well with him that Tatsumi knew details about his family that even Hisoka didn't, not to mention that he seemed to know Nagare better than Hisoka ever had. Though he supposed if he had to choose whom to trust such secrets to, he would choose Tatsumi nine times out of ten.

The slow pace of things at the office didn't seem to be helping Hisoka sleep any better either. A return to the real worlds meant a return to nightmares. And ever since his communion with Yatonokami, the serpentine theme of them was getting worse. Wriggling shadows on the walls. Glowing eyes in the background. The suggestion of a flickering tongue, darting out to taste the air.

One night he dreamed he was back in his childhood home's cherry grove, the red moon above and Muraki and his female victim on the horizon. Hisoka watched the knife fall. He heard it plunge into flesh and blood and bone. The woman sagged in Muraki's arms, just as she did in his memories.

But instead of legs folding beneath her as she collapsed to the ground, it was a thick, scaled coil that slid from Muraki's hold to pool on the wet earth. Long, tangled black hair spread out around it where the head should have been, but he could not see a face to go with it, human or serpent or otherwise. All Hisoka knew with any certainty was that that hair was just like his mother's.

But it could have belonged to any number of women. Rui hadn't been Muraki's victim that night. Even as Hisoka was thinking that, he tried to turn his eyes to Muraki in his dream . . . but couldn't find him. Someone else was standing there, holding the bloody knife. Someone not in a trench coat, but in a cotton robe. Someone who looked a lot like Hisoka.

 _But that can't be me! I'm standing right here!_

Or was he? Hisoka looked down at the grass around his feet, drawn by a movement like waves all around him. On every side, snakes were coming up out of the soft ground like worms after the rain. Different colors and sizes, a variety of species. He peered closer, trying to figure out why there were so many and where they were coming from.

And that was when they noticed him. As one, every snake in the grove turned its head toward him. He could sense the thousands of eyes, even if he could not see them all through the grass. The ones that were closest slithered toward him with alarming speed. A viper puffed out its cheeks, only a heartbeat from springing its jaws open wide and gathering itself to strike—

But before a single fang could touch him, Hisoka woke.

Heart pounding, sweat sticking his clothes to him, he sat up in the dark. _Just a dream._ But waking could not rid him of the reality of what he carried inside.

What he needed was a new case. Sitting around filing and refiling old paperwork all day was leaving Hisoka too much time to think about his own situation. Maybe it was time he humbled himself, went to Todoroki begging and promising to be on his best behavior. If he thought that would make a difference, that was, and if it weren't so much easier thought than done.

Hisoka could feel that something had changed the moment he entered the Summons office that morning. Many of his coworkers still hadn't forgiven him for running off to Gensoukai when he'd been expressly forbidden from doing so. Just as many still felt betrayed by Saya's reporting to Peacekeeping, even if they were kind to her in person.

But Hisoka had only to see the looks on their faces to know that wasn't the problem. The coworkers he passed quickly looked away when he met their eyes—perhaps from shame, or embarrassment of him, but he felt there was something else to it. Their energy told him something bad had happened, but it didn't say what.

Todoroki must have gone and done it. He had sought Enma's permission to have Hisoka locked up and Enma must have granted it. Peacekeeping officers were probably waiting for Hisoka to arrive for work to officially arrest him. What else could it be, Hisoka thought with a sinking feeling when he saw Tatsumi and Konoe coming out of the debriefing room. Weary expressions on their faces, they conferred in hushed voices.

But with the dread came a sense of resignation. If confinement was to be Hisoka's fate for the near future, at least he could count on those two to give him a straight explanation.

"What happened?" Hisoka asked them. "Why is everybody—"

But the question died on his lips. His heart felt as though it had sunk like a stone inside him as soon as he got near enough to sense their auras. _It's worse than I thought. . . ._

Konoe clapped a hand on his secretary's shoulder. And when he said to Hisoka, "Why don't you step inside, Kurosaki," he could barely keep his voice from cracking.

God. . . . He was going to find out demons had attacked and killed Hijiri while he was in the Imaginary World, or someone else he should have been responsible for.

But even as he entertained the thought, Hisoka knew it wasn't true. Or else Tatsumi wouldn't be smiling. Though the blinds on the room's windows were closed, Hisoka knew exactly what was waiting for him inside that door. He just couldn't bring himself to believe it, for fear that if he did, for just one second, it would break the spell and this would all prove to still be a dream. He wasn't sure he would be able to bear it if he woke up now.

Hisoka must not have been the only one to feel that way.

He was sitting in a chair against the inside wall when Hisoka went in. Elbows on his knees, anxiously tapping one foot, and poised to flee at any moment, like a loved one in a hospital waiting room anticipating bad news. Not like he belonged there, as he had belonged for the past seventy years and more. More like a stranger. Just passing through.

But all that changed the moment he saw Hisoka. The restlessness evaporated from him, and a thousand different thoughts coalesced into one behind his eyes when they met Hisoka's.

Tsuzuki leapt to his feet, and Hisoka had barely a second for it all to sink in before Tsuzuki's arms were around him, holding him tight. Tsuzuki's face was buried in his shoulder, breathing his name back into him: "Hisoka . . . You're alive. . . ."

"Tsuzuki," Hisoka chided out of habit, and felt the hitch of breath in Tsuzuki's burst of a laugh that told he was crying as he said, "I know, I know. . . . But you're still _here_. They told me you were, but I didn't believe it. I wanted to, I wanted that so badly, but I couldn't. I couldn't believe it until now."

 _You thought I was gone, didn't you? Forever._ Tsuzuki had believed that so deeply, for so long, it was all Hisoka could feel. Like a knife to the heart, it pierced him through, and lodged there: the aching loss, the regret, the self-loathing of knowing that he was responsible for destroying the one thing he was still fighting for. Somehow, for having Hisoka there in his arms, Tsuzuki felt it all the worse. It was what could have been, Hisoka told himself—what so easily could have been, and the terror of how close it had been to being real, that dragged Tsuzuki over the coals of his mourning all over again.

Meanwhile, the shock of seeing Tsuzuki again had stunned Hisoka stiff. But as it sank in for him, too, that this was no dream, his arms came up to return the embrace, and he allowed himself to surrender to the reality. Behind him, he heard Tatsumi gently shut the door, leaving the two of them alone, and thought he could see in his mind's eye the secretary's satisfied smile.

"I'm here," Hisoka repeated. Now that they were alone, it felt like a confession as much as a promise. There was so much he had been meaning to say since they parted ways nine months ago, but he couldn't think of a single thing. Just "I'm here."

"God," Tsuzuki sobbed into his hair, "the things I've done—" But whatever horrors Tsuzuki was referring to he shut from his mind the next moment, before Hisoka could know them. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"It's okay," Hisoka soothed him. "You're back. Nothing else matters now."

Too soon for Hisoka's liking, Tsuzuki managed to pull himself back to arm's length. He sniffled as he wiped one cheek with the heel of his hand. "I was so sure I'd killed you for good this time—"

"I know—"

"He told me you were gone." By "he," Hisoka assumed he meant Muraki. "He said he'd seen you destroyed—"

"Obviously he lied to you. I'm sure he didn't even believe it himself, he just said those things to you to break you down. Just like he always does." Hisoka was sure of it. Just as he was sure the news of his own demise wasn't the only lie Muraki had told to try and manipulate Tsuzuki into seeing things his way. "We can talk about that later, alright? Right now it isn't important." It was disturbing to talk about his own destruction, like if they kept on the subject, it might actually happen retroactively. "More to the point—what are you doing here?"

"I got away, Hisoka," Tsuzuki said as he leaned back against the edge of the conference table. "I—I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to do it. Maybe Muraki slipped up or I finally figured a way out of his trap. . . . Either way, it wasn't easy, but I made it. I'm free."

 _Free, huh?_ Hisoka couldn't help his suspicions. It wasn't impossible that Muraki had actually messed up; but experience told him it was far more likely that man had _let_ Tsuzuki go. Which begged the question: why would he? Wasn't Tsuzuki the culmination of everything Muraki wanted?

In any case, "I didn't mean that. I meant, what are you doing _here_? Tsuzuki—in case you didn't know, Enma practically put out a manhunt for you when you disappeared!"

Tsuzuki blinked, with that kicked-puppy look that said he wasn't sure why Hisoka was yelling at _him._ "Well, where else was I going to go? This is where I belong."

"You're a wanted man, Tsuzuki! When you took off without a word, the higher-ups thought you'd abandoned your post. Todoroki has done everything he can think of to try and get you charged with treason." Either the other chief's name or the charge earned Hisoka a wince; maybe a bit of both. "He could still have you arrested and brought to trial for this. And you thought you could just waltz back in here like you just got back from a vacation?"

Oh, Hisoka so itched to call him an idiot. Even after several months of missing Tsuzuki terribly, he just slipped right back into old habits. Something told him it would have done more harm than good.

But it was concern that filled Hisoka now, and made the backs of his eyes sting with unshed tears. Concern, and fear. He just got Tsuzuki back. He couldn't let them take him away again. "That was a stupid, thoughtless thing you did, Tsuzuki! You should have followed protocol—I'm sure there's protocols for this sort of thing. . . ."

"I wanted to see you, Hisoka, before anything else happened. I had to. To make sure—"

He cut himself off. But Hisoka could guess what he had been about to say. Something like _To make sure they weren't lying to me about you being here._

But why Tsuzuki felt like he had to lower a curtain on his emotions, keep them all to himself all of a sudden, was beyond Hisoka. "I'm not stupid," Tsuzuki said. "I know I can't hide myself here in Summons forever, and I don't plan to."

He looked up at the gentle knock on the door, nodding for Tatsumi to come back in: "I fully intend to surrender myself to Enma's judgment over this. Maybe if I throw myself at his mercy, promise to be the best shinigami he's ever seen, he'll take pity on me and let me come back to work. Let me pay off my debt with my service. A guy can hope, right?"

"We can all hope for such a favorable outcome," Tatsumi said. "However, what you did may just have crossed a line too far, Tsuzuki. You should prepare yourself for a harsh sentence."

"I know," Tsuzuki said, but he smiled stubbornly. "I wouldn't have come back if I wasn't ready to accept that."

"You don't really think Enma would terminate Tsuzuki over this, do you?" Hisoka asked the secretary. "I thought you said before that Tsuzuki was too valuable to him, that he wouldn't dare let him go."

"There's a first time for everything," Tsuzuki said, with that same smile; and Hisoka didn't like the way it felt like he was trying too hard. "What I did this time might have finally been too much for Enma to ignore. But if retirement is to be the verdict, there isn't much I can do about it now, is there?"

"I don't see how you can joke about this," Hisoka said under his breath. But on second thought, it wasn't a joke. It was just like Tsuzuki to already have come to terms with his fate, whatever it ended up being. Now Hisoka realized why he hated that smile. He'd seen it before, in Kyoto, before the fire.

And he never liked that term, "retirement." Why couldn't they all just call it what it was?

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," said Tatsumi. "First things first, Enma will want to interrogate you about your whereabouts over the last nine months. I'm sure he will have his two floating heads examine you for any booby traps Muraki might have placed on your soul while he's at it."

 _Booby traps? Is that possible?_ Though Hisoka supposed his own curse scars were pretty much the same thing. Albeit placed on him in life, so that death made them indelible. How much of a stretch would it be for a man with as much knowledge of the arcane as Muraki had to do something similar to a shinigami?

"I submit myself to his judgment, fully," Tsuzuki said. "I don't have any knowledge of any traps, but if Muraki tampered with me in some way, I want it found out just as much as Enma does.

"I want to repent for what I did," he added, this time, to Hisoka. "This mess you're in now, this fighting between the departments that Tatsumi's told me about—all of it started when I ran away from my duties. It's past time I stood up and took responsibility, not just for my actions but for the consequences they've brought."

"So you're going to fall on your sword."

Hisoka couldn't quite catch the crack in his own voice when he said those words, and Tsuzuki noticed it. Such guilt and sorrow he returned with his stare—but though he opened his mouth to answer, he never got a word out.

"Everything but," Tatsumi said for him, with a note of finality that dared the other two to contradict him. "On Enma's mercy, yes. But Todoroki will be hearing of Tsuzuki's return soon, if he hasn't already, and he's sure to insist on taking him into Peacekeeping custody."

"Sounds like code for 'locking Tsuzuki up where Summons will never see him again'."

"My thoughts precisely. Which is why we don't intend to surrender him without a fight. Chief Konoe and I have been on the phone all morning, pulling what favors we still have in Judgment. The Count has also been informed of the situation. You can rest assured that he will sue most ardently for our cause with King Enma."

"Another debt I'll owe him that I can never repay," Tsuzuki muttered with a droop of the shoulders.

Hisoka wondered what he would have thought of Tatsumi's and the Count's newfound amity. Perhaps Tsuzuki would have just taken from that that the two were conspiring to share in their spoils. "So long as you agree to behave yourself and not run away again for the foreseeable future," the secretary said, pretending he hadn't heard Tsuzuki's objection.

"I promise," Tsuzuki said. "I don't see that I have any better options anyway. If I run, Enma will send his Peacekeepers to pursue me to the ends of the earth. At least this way I have a chance of everything returning to normal, however slim it may be."

"It isn't as slim as that. I have faith that the Count will come through for us, even if no one else does. And, if it comes to it, everyone here is prepared to fight for you. Maybe not by taking up arms, but they have other means of resisting and making their wishes clear. Enma would not risk losing all of Summons in a single blow. We are too vital a department to go without, and he has spent too many years building up our team to afford to start over from scratch."

That seemed to reassure Tsuzuki somewhat, even if his nod wasn't the most confident one Hisoka had ever seen.

But as he watched his two coworkers, Hisoka felt the curious itch of an old jealousy that he knew was silly but could never seem to shake. For all that everyone told him he was Tsuzuki's most compatible partner yet, there was a place inside Tsuzuki that even Hisoka could never reach yet somehow Tatsumi could. Effortlessly, and despite their past animosity. Of course, they had a history that Hisoka could never take away from them, nor was it his place to pry into it.

But he could not afford to give up on Tsuzuki again, like he had, if only briefly, on the Kyoto case. If their partnership was going to heal— _if_ they would even be allowed to remain partners after everything that had happened—Hisoka could not afford to leave gulfs in their relationship that he could not bridge. He would have to work harder. Not at being Tsuzuki's Tatsumi, per se, but at being Tsuzuki's everything.

"Speaking of the team," Tatsumi said, "there are a lot of people here who have been worried sick about you, Tsuzuki, and would really like to say a few words when you have a moment. Not criticism," he added quickly to the concern that flashed across Tsuzuki's face. "Just . . . to express their relief to see you back in one piece. It's been a long time. The place hasn't been the same without you. That is, if you think you're up to seeing more people?"

That concern concerned Hisoka as well. He could feel Tsuzuki's terror at facing his own coworkers, even if he hid it well on the outside, and it didn't feel like the Tsuzuki he knew. The Tsuzuki who couldn't wait to greet everyone in the morning. "Maybe one at a time," Hisoka suggested, and felt rewarded by a loosening of Tsuzuki's tension beside him.

Tatsumi nodded at that. "I'll let you two get back to it, then." And with that, he left them once again to their privacy.

There was still too much to say. Tatsumi understood that without having to put it bluntly. More than what could be said in a single afternoon. But Tsuzuki wasn't sure how much longer than that he had left. He started to say "Hisoka, I—"

But Hisoka, for reasons he wasn't sure even he would be able to explain, couldn't let him get any further. "There'll be time for all of that later," he said gently, even as he shot to his feet. "I promise, Tsuzuki. I won't let Todoroki or Enma or anyone send you anywhere until you and I have had a chance to say everything we've been wanting to say to each other."

It was just that he couldn't bear to hear it here. It was too public, even in the relative privacy of the conference room. And he wasn't ready. After all Hisoka swore to himself that he would say immediately upon Tsuzuki's return, if it ever happened, now that the opportunity had come, he just wasn't ready to say it.

No, that wasn't the whole truth either. He was afraid to. After everything he had been through, everything the two of them had faced together, he was suddenly afraid of a few words.

 _They're never_ just _a few words. Not when Tsuzuki's involved._

"Wakaba's dying to make sure you're okay. I can feel it through the wall." Which wasn't a lie. Hisoka could sense her nervous energy just on the other side of the door, saw her in his mind's eye trying to peek between the closed venetian blinds. "Maybe we should put her out of her misery and let her see you're not a hologram or anything?"

Tsuzuki was about to protest, but he must have seen that Hisoka was going to get his way one way or another, even if he had to teleport himself out of the room. Though the crestfallen look on his face was almost enough to make Hisoka stay, out of pure guilt. "I guess it would be cruel to keep her waiting," Tsuzuki said. Though his smile, which was obviously forced, begged Hisoka, _Don't go. What if this is all just my imagination? What if I never see you again?_

"I'll just be right outside if you need me," Hisoka assured him. But he didn't feel like he could breathe easy again until he was on the other side of that door.


	26. New normal

Hisoka was just about to change for bed when there was a knock on his apartment door. Not that there was any question, after the events of that day, who was standing on the other side of it.

"Hisoka! Good, you're still awake!" Tsuzuki proclaimed when he opened it, and began to invite himself in.

Hisoka refusing to move out of the way did put a bit of a crimp in his plan, though. "It's late, Tsuzuki," Hisoka said as he covered a yawn. "Any chance we can do this tomorrow? I mean, now that we have all the time in the world to catch up. . . ."

But he recognized the uneasy, shifty look in Tsuzuki's eyes. "You're right, absolutely. It's just . . . Well, I've been away for a while . . ."

"Oh my god! You're not worried giant spiders moved into your apartment while you were gone _again_ , are you?"

"Actually," a sheepish grin, "someone _did_ move in, but not spiders. Guess I've been gone so long the landlords had me evicted in absentia. There's a family living there now, which I only just barely managed to find out before two little girls got traumatized with home-invasion nightmares for life."

Hisoka knew there was no fighting it. He stepped aside, and shut the door after Tsuzuki.

"I promise I won't overstay my welcome," his partner said as he kicked off his shoes and shrugged out of his trench. "The chief got me a hearing with Enma first thing in the morning to discuss my future as a shinigami, and if all goes well and he determines I can stay, I should be assigned a new place by tomorrow night. But to be honest, I wasn't looking forward to going back there—and I don't just mean the spiders. That apartment _never_ felt like home the first night after coming back from a long trip."

"What about all your stuff?"

"I didn't have that much I was attached to," Tsuzuki waved off his concern, though Hisoka couldn't help feeling like his partner was trying to convince _himself_ of that more than anything. "Other than the garden, but I was away so long I probably wouldn't recognize it now. It would be best to just let it go. I'd cry if it turned out something died while I wasn't there to care for it."

Then Tsuzuki promptly began rooting around in the kitchen cupboards with the declaration, "I could use a drink. You?"

Hisoka shook his head at him. Some things never changed. And for the dead, they changed even less. But he couldn't blame Tsuzuki. It was one comfort worth clinging to, with Tsuzuki's upcoming hearing looming over all of them, to know that Muraki hadn't done anything to erase the Tsuzuki Hisoka remembered.

"I'm sorry about your plants," Hisoka told him, crossing his arms over his chest. He never did understand how a person could get emotionally attached to a hydrangea, but he'd been subjected to enough boring stories and picture shares to know what it meant to Tsuzuki. It was probably easier not to think about any of that, particularly when one's future and even existence could be on the line.

Tsuzuki, however, acted as though he hadn't heard. "I'll have to get a whole new wardrobe, of course. That won't be cheap, but maybe I can convince Tatsumi I'm owed some back-pay for everything I've been through in the last couple of months. Then again, probably not. . . . Terazuma was nice enough to provide me some hand-me-downs in the meantime, so don't be surprised if I smell like an ashtray for a week or so. Kind of surprised me he'd do something so generous, actually. What do you think: Wakaba's influence?"

"Believe it or not," Hisoka said, "I think Terazuma actually missed you."

Tsuzuki snorted. "Yeah. Right." But he would never know how true Hisoka's statement was. Nor did Hisoka think it was his place to try and convince him. If Terazuma wanted to revert back to being a thorn in Tsuzuki's side the moment they reunited, that was his prerogative. It wouldn't surprise Hisoka if that was how the former detective chose to show he cared. "Hey, is it true that he's no longer possessed? How did _that_ happen?"

"It's kind of a long story. . . ."

There was a triumphant "Ah-ha!" from the kitchen at the same time, followed by the pop of a cork.

Hisoka started. "Hey—I was saving that!" he said as Tsuzuki drank right from the bottle of red wine. Not a cheap one, either. Granted Hisoka had been saving it for Tsuzuki's return, but it was the principle of the thing. "I was hoping we could drink it together over a nice meal or something, but it's too late to cook and you don't deserve take-out."

Perhaps by way of apology, Tsuzuki retrieved a tumbler and poured a portion for Hisoka. Too generous of one, in Hisoka's opinion, as he never had managed to be anything more than a lightweight when it came to alcohol, and would be sipping on that one glass all night. Of course, what he didn't finish, Tsuzuki would.

"We can still share it," he said as Hisoka took the glass. "To things that aren't too late." Tsuzuki clinked the wine bottle against it. " _Kampai._ "

He didn't wait for Hisoka to drink before taking a long swig from the bottle.

"Now." Tsuzuki settled himself and the bottle down into the closest chair. "I want to hear all about what you've been up to while I've been gone."

"That's a lot to tell," said Hisoka, who didn't know where he was supposed to start.

"Well, I've got a lot of time to hear it. Don't think I'll be feeling like sleeping any time soon."

* * *

Naturally, a few hours later found Tsuzuki passed out across Hisoka's bed.

Fortunately Hisoka had had the presence of mind to notice the wine bottle was empty and the inevitable was in sight, and while Tsuzuki was still somewhat conscious—and entirely drunk, which, true to form, Tsuzuki insisted he never got even while he was—Hisoka managed to convince him to take the bed and lie down, before he fell asleep in the armchair and got a sore neck.

Of course, Tsuzuki had needed assistance to get over to the bed—seemed he could undress himself while inebriated just fine, but walking in a straight line posed a real challenge—and all while Hisoka was propping him up he insisted that, while he would do what Hisoka asked because it was Hisoka asking it, he had no intent or desire to fall asleep.

He wasn't snoring. At least, Hisoka wouldn't have called it that. But Tsuzuki was breathing so loudly that there was no question just how exhausted he had been. There was no getting him back up again, either. _Which means_ I _get to sleep in the uncomfortable chair._

Or maybe not.

Now that Tsuzuki was back, and there was some semblance of a back-to-normal, it would have been all too easy, all too tempting to deny it. Affection. Love. . . . Those weren't exactly things Hisoka was used to being on the receiving end of, and it had been an equally long time since he'd given them. What he _had_ received had been too twisted to call by either of those names.

Yet what he had felt from Tsuzuki that morning, just pouring from him straight into Hisoka's soul, had been pure. It had been strong. And he had wanted to surrender to it so badly, only the knowledge of being separated from his coworkers by a thin wall and venetian blinds kept him from giving in. Well, that and not knowing what exactly Tsuzuki had been up to the past several months.

But there was no one else here. And Tsuzuki was too tanked to hold it against him later. There was no one Hisoka needed to pretend for, other than himself. And he was sick of pretending.

Carefully—though he needn't have worried, as Tsuzuki wasn't a light sleeper—Hisoka settled himself into his own bed behind Tsuzuki. Hesitating, he put his hand on Tsuzuki's waist, and held his breath when Tsuzuki sucked in one of his own and shifted under his touch. But it was only to get more comfortable. His breathing deepened, evened out again.

Encouraged, Hisoka pulled himself closer. Buried his face in Tsuzuki's back and breathed in the scent of him, amazed he could have missed it for so long. As if years had passed rather than nine months. And, like catching a scent as a grown man that he hadn't experienced since he was a boy, those nine months melted away as though they had never been. At the same time, Hisoka knew nothing was really the same. They had crossed too many lines for things to ever go back to being the same. And that was a sobering thought.

Whether Enma came down hard on Tsuzuki, it was out of Hisoka's hands. But he had him now, in his arms, if only for this little while. Tsuzuki's heartbeat slowly coaxed Hisoka's into its own rhythm, and Hisoka wondered if he would dream Tsuzuki's dreams.

* * *

Sakaki was not expected to last the night. Even if Oriya had arrived sooner, and Sakaki hadn't lost so much blood, the damage to his organs was too severe and too extensive to repair, all the more so for a man of his age.

Perhaps mistaking Oriya's guilt for grief, the doctor directed him to the hospital chapel, as they were doubtless trained to do when they saw the last vestiges of hope drain from a family member's face. But the only gods Oriya still had faith existed had no need of human prayers or curses, nor could they be bothered to listen.

He went anyway. Perhaps deep in his subconscious he had an inkling that _he_ would be there. An angel of death if ever Oriya knew one. Only this time, in a charcoal trench coat. Oriya didn't think he owned anything that wasn't white anymore.

"I see you, but I don't know whether you're alive or dead."

"Alive," Muraki confirmed, thankfully not in the form of a koan. "For what that's worth."

"So is your man. But not for much longer, by what I've been told."

"I know."

"Is that all you can say?"

"You're right." Muraki bowed his head. "Thank you, Oriya, for being there to call for help when I was not. I have always been able to count on you to cover for my shortcomings."

"You know that's not what I meant!"

Oriya gestured with a sweep of his arm to the chapel door, and the hospital beyond where, somewhere, Sakaki lay on a gurney, fighting for his life. Surely Muraki's thoughts had to be on the welfare of his man, too. Unless Oriya was wrong, and there wasn't a shred of human compassion left in his old friend. But he could only bear to meet Oriya out of the corner of his eye. His goddamned dry eyes.

"Sakaki would have given _anything_ for you!" Oriya accused him, gritting his teeth so hard they ached. "Including his life. Now it looks like he may do just that. And this is how you repay him? By dismissing him like refuse the moment he's no longer of use to you?"

"He knew what he was signing up for—"

"Then you truly feel nothing. His sacrifice means nothing to you."

Muraki did turn to confront him then, fully, and Oriya almost regretted it. How badly he had missed his old friend, he didn't even know until they were standing face to face. There was an otherworldly beauty to Muraki that Oriya had always felt himself drawn to despite his lack of attraction to other men. Perhaps the way the men of Sodom were drawn to the angels: to something so beyond oneself that one couldn't help but desire to stand in its light, and keep it for oneself. And he hated that Muraki had that effect on him—and knew he wasn't the only one on whom Muraki used that power to his advantage. Just as Oriya hated that he never seemed to be able to hold on to his anger in Muraki's presence, even when he knew it was justified.

Even now, it was poised to flee at the sight of Muraki's face. Oriya had thought his old friend unmoved, but he recognized the melancholy in those silver eyes. The stubborn Buddha smile that hid a pain to which Oriya was always denied access.

"Sakaki knew this was a possibility when he entered into the Muraki household. I was just a child then, I didn't know he existed. But he knew of me—what my grandfather deemed it necessary to share, in any case. And even being privy to what monstrosities the men in my family were guilty of, he never ran, though he had so many chances to do so. Given the choice, he chose to stay. He chose to be an accomplice to our sins."

Oriya could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Are you really saying this is his own fault? That he brought his own death on himself?"

Muraki began to protest, but Oriya wouldn't let him. He was sick of the excuses, sick of the lies and the shifting of blame.

"I knew you were cruel," he said through his teeth, "and that you don't have much regard for the rest of humanity. But I thought you would at least be capable of feeling some measure of indebtedness to the man who's been looking after you for so long. You're probably the closest thing he has to kin. You should be in there with him, instead of cowering in here, before a god you can't possibly believe in. You should have to look him in the eye and face that you're responsible for this! Don't you owe Sakaki at least that much? Surely gratitude isn't beyond you, or remorse—"

"Remorse!" Muraki breathed the word like it was a revelation, tilting his head back as though to laugh. But he did not laugh. "Do you know, Oriya, that if not for Sakaki I would have died the night of my parents' funeral? Cut down by my own half-brother. I don't think I ever told you that. Sakaki saved me, shot Saki in the back while he held our father's sword to my throat—"

"You told me Saki died of an accident."

"And you always assumed that meant _I_ killed him. Didn't you?"

He shot Oriya a knowing grin, and Oriya could not deny it. He had never said so aloud, but he had long harbored a certainty, ever since learning Muraki was capable and indeed partial to killing, that his old friend was responsible for Shidou Saki's death. And Oriya had long since justified it to himself, telling himself it must have been in self-defense, or, as Muraki had told him, an unfortunate accident. If he were entirely honest, it wouldn't have mattered to him if Muraki killed his brother in cold blood; Saki had _earned_ his death long ago in Oriya's mind.

"I never told you the truth because I could not forgive Sakaki what he had done," Muraki confessed.

But he saved your life, Oriya wanted to argue. What was so unforgivable about that?

But this was Muraki they were talking about. How many lives might have been spared if Saki had succeeded that day?

"I felt that revenge for my parents' deaths should have been mine alone to take, and that if I died in the attempt to achieve it . . . well, at least I would have committed _one_ act of filial piety in my short life. Sakaki took even that away from me. He robbed me of my revenge. It wasn't until I was robbed of the chance a second time that I realized what a worthless goal it had been. All those years I had been clinging to a worthless old injury. It was undeserving of me."

Oriya could have laughed. If he wasn't so disgusted. For a moment, he had believed his old friend to be on the brink of a breakthrough—about to confess how he had been wrong so many years, how he regretted hurting the people who cared about him. Oriya should have known better. He should have known better than to think that Muraki even noticed what blood was spilled for love of him.

"Sakaki understood that," Muraki said with renewed conviction. "He tried to tell me, countless times he tried to tell me, that I was made for something greater. I could not afford to let my grandfather's work be in vain, pursuing an adversary who was so far beneath me."

"Then, this is still just about you," Oriya muttered. "It's always been about you. Hasn't it? _Your_ revenge, _your_ destiny, _your_ legacy—how you have to live up to _your_ grandfather's ideals? I'm sick of it! What about the people around you, Muraki? Don't their feelings matter? Their _lives_? The sacrifices they've made—for _you_?"

But Oriya didn't give him a chance to answer and defend himself. He didn't want to have to hear the same old bullshit granted the dignity of spoken words. "You asked me once, if you died, would I shed a single tear for you. But could you ever shed a tear for anyone else? Other than your goddamned Tsuzuki, that is," he snarled, seeing the refutation already forming on Muraki's lips. "That's right. I know he's what this is really about. And I assume we have him to thank for murdering Sakaki. How many people have to die for him, Muraki? How many more have to die because you can't let go? Because he's already fucking _dead_!"

It might have shamed Oriya, to curse in what was meant to be a holy place, to lose his composure and resort to language he had come to see as plebeian. But he didn't care. He was past such petty concerns. With Muraki standing before him, the one person he could honestly say he loved and wished he didn't, ready to throw his life away again. And again. And again. . . .

And take whoever was nearby down with him.

"Where does it end?" Oriya could no longer help the waver in his voice, but Muraki could think as little of him for it as he liked. "How many more lives do you have to take before you put an end to this nonsense?"

"Just one."

It was a chastened Muraki who spoke, and it robbed Oriya of whatever other accusations he had wanted to make. The reflection of candlelight from the altar on his glasses reminded Oriya of their last night together in Kyoto. The graveyard full of lanterns, like souls in limbo drifting through the autumn night. . . .

It vanished when he tilted his head—replaced by a different fire, deep down in his cold eyes. "Just one more. And then, I promise, I will trouble you no more."

But that wasn't the answer Oriya wanted. He wanted to take Muraki in both hands and shake sense into him, until he got an answer more satisfactory than that. Yet all he could manage was a sighed, "Muraki. . . ."

It was his old friend who reached out. Though, as natural as gestures of reassurance might seem to come to a doctor of long practice, Oriya never could make himself believe there was genuine warmth and affection in it. He wanted to, but knowing what Muraki was capable—and culpable—of, he could never make himself believe it.

"I'm not sure I've ever been capable of feeling love," Muraki told him with a candor that Oriya would have been ashamed to admit he could not entirely trust, "but if I have felt it, it has only ever been for four people in my life. One is dead, another soon will be, and one is in Hell. I _cannot_ lose you, too, Oriya. Not now."

 _What are you trying to say? What the hell am I supposed to take from that, Muraki!_

But the tear that rolled down Muraki's right cheek stunned Oriya to speechlessness. Was this the sign he had been waiting for for twenty years? The sign that he had his friend all wrong—that he hadn't wasted his own life defending this man he knew was indefensible?

No. Of course not. Because the tear that rolled down that one side, from under the veil of hair that hid Muraki's artificial eye, wasn't a tear of remorse. Or love. Or anything Oriya could have hoped for. It left a pink trail down Muraki's cheek, from diluted blood or . . . Oriya didn't want to think what else might have tinged it that unhealthy color.

Muraki released him and reached for a handkerchief, turning away as he dabbed at his face. "I'm sorry. This eye . . ."

"What's wrong? Is it infected?"

"A malfunction. Nothing you need worry about."

He lowered the handkerchief for a moment as he blinked and rolled the eye around its socket. The scarred and stretched tissue around it did not seem changed, except that the years had only made the damage more pronounced. But Oriya thought the eye itself seemed different. Dimmed. Out of synch. Lacking in a certain razor-sharpness that had always unnerved him when he looked into it.

 _Malfunction, my ass._ Though Muraki insisted the eye was artificial, Oriya could never shake the feeling that it was as alive as the rest of him. If not entirely human.

"I have to go," Muraki said suddenly, startling Oriya from his musings and rekindling his anger.

"What? Because your _eye_ is bothering you? You don't get to walk away from this that easi—"

But it was Muraki who grabbed his arm and pulled him close, so Oriya could not escape the chapel or that rotting eye's gaze if he wanted to.

"I need you to make me a promise as well," Muraki said. "That if you ever see Ukyou again, you will care for her, and love her, the way I was never able."

"Ukyou?" Oriya started. "What does she have to do with this?" But even as he asked the question, he knew it was all connected. He would not have gone looking for Muraki if it wasn't her disappearance he had been trying to solve. And he would not have found Sakaki on the mansion floor, nor be standing here now, beside a Muraki he never thought he would see again in the flesh.

He could have kicked himself that her name hadn't been the first word out of his mouth when he saw Muraki. Now that the time left to speak seemed to be slipping away, the questions all came out in a rush: "Do you know where she is? Is she still alive? Do you know why her house looks like a bomb fell on it?"

Muraki released his hold, but Oriya wasn't done with him just yet. He grabbed on to Muraki's coat, and shook him once, hard. "Of course you know, bastard. . . . _Tell me where she is! Tell me she's alive!_ "

 _Just say that one little word, Muraki. "Yes." It would be so goddamn easy. Please. Even if it's a lie. Just say it!_

But for all of Oriya's pleading, the word would not emerge from Muraki's lips. Nor could Oriya find it written anywhere on Muraki's face. _Yet he speaks of seeing her again. . . ._

"Just promise me, Oriya. That's all I need of you. You know she always loved you more than she did me."

His audacity. . . . Oriya might have been the companion of convenience, and the safer choice of the two, but "We both know that isn't true."

Though how often had he wished it were? How many times a day, when Ukyou came on one of her visits, did Oriya wish they could pretend that it had only ever been the two of them, no engagements or other affections to stand between them, no murderous mutual friend to further complicate their lives. But then, would he and Ukyou have even met if Muraki had never existed? Would they have anything left to bind them to one another if he disappeared?

Oriya wasn't sure he wanted to find out. Was it worth it, to gain everything he had dreamed of, if it came at the loss of a love he couldn't escape for all he tried?

"No, it isn't." Muraki let his smile fall, as Oriya's hands fell away from him. "But it's what should be. It's what you both deserve."

* * *

Home.

And another day in it so very like all the others. Even a nine-month furlough couldn't change that.

That was what Tsuzuki felt overwhelmingly as he stood among the undead cherry trees of Enma-cho. He should have been elated. His return was hard-won, after all. But all he could feel was how much the _same_ it was to all the seventy-five-plus years that had come before it. _As if I never left._

Some consistencies he was thankful for, of course. Hisoka was still here. Tsuzuki didn't have to look everyone in the eye with the knowledge hanging over them that he was responsible for his partner's destruction.

And waking up this morning— _that_ had been a new one. Hisoka probably hadn't meant to fall asleep, because Tsuzuki was sure he would have been mortified to have anyone catch them in the position they'd been in. Even in sleep, Hisoka had held on to him like a child afraid someone was going to take his teddy bear away. Tsuzuki, however, had felt such a deep and pleasant warmth fill his body that he hadn't felt since . . . well, since earlier that day when he learned he hadn't killed Hisoka after all. If he hadn't had an appointment to get to, he might have decided to stay and see what happened when Hisoka woke up naturally.

Once he would have been tempted to break the spell, and tease Hisoka for trying to get him into his bed. But not this morning. After all they'd been through, Tsuzuki couldn't be that cruel to the kid. No. Better if Hisoka awoke after Tsuzuki received his sentence, whatever it may be. After it was too late to do anything about it. Despite the headache from the wine coming on, Tsuzuki had been extra careful not to disturb Hisoka as he disentangled himself, and let himself out.

While he watched the falling petals, trying to will away the throbbing in his temples, a lone butterfly drifted toward him through the grove. Wings of palest green, the same hue as Death's horse in the Book of Revelation, with a large black spot on each side. Tsuzuki raised his hand to it, and the little creature, looking for a perch, allowed itself to be tempted in.

In one swift motion, Tsuzuki closed his fingers around it and squeezed it tight in his fist. He felt the tiny body burst against his palm as his fingertips pressed down and inward, blood flood the creases, wings crumple and disconnect. _Yes, Muraki. Life is a fragile thing._ He understood that now. Though to be fair, he had always understood it. But understanding and accepting were two different things.

"The chief said I might find you here," Tatsumi said as he strode up. "Collecting your thoughts before the hearing? You know, it's only human to be nervous."

To anyone else, Tatsumi's words might have sounded cold, blunt, falsely cheery. Not so to Tsuzuki, who had known him for so long. _You know what I need to hear right now, don't you? Just pretend everything will go on being the same, never changing, never ending. Stay human. That's what they want of you._

"Why should I be nervous?" Tsuzuki said, though neither one was fooled. "I've been judged before. And reprimanded before, too."

Not like this, Tatsumi's patient smile itched to say, but even he didn't want to voice it. As if to do so might skew Tsuzuki's chances. "You're right. You're a pro. You and His Highness must be on first-name terms by now."

"Just about!"

The secretary chuckled. But his eyes behind his glasses were full of all the gravity the rest of his demeanor resisted. "I want you to know I have faith you can come out the other side of this, Tsuzuki. Just answer all of Enma's questions honestly and open your soul fully to inspection. Enma rewards honesty. So long as you don't let Miru-me and Kagu-hana distract you into reacting defensively."

The two severed heads at the foot of Enma's throne were enough to give anyone the creeps, no matter how many times one endured their gaze. "I know, I know," Tsuzuki said. "Lie, and Enma will rip out my tongue. I was taught that as a kid, too, Tatsumi."

But his glibness didn't sit well with Tatsumi. The shadows seemed to hang darker around him this morning, with a dread that he dared not mention.

"Hey," Tsuzuki said. "You're not going to lose me after just getting me back." He wasn't sure that he really believed that, but it seemed to be what Tatsumi needed to hear. And he couldn't stand Tatsumi looking at him like it was the last time he was going to see Tsuzuki. Just which of them was supposed to be the moral support here? "I'm too valuable to Enma and his plans, right? Even if I begged him to, he wouldn't dream of letting me go."

That seemed to do the trick, and Tatsumi brightened. If only just a little. "Of course. You're right. Nevertheless, I'll be waiting there for you the very moment you get out, at which time you are free to grouse to me about your ordeal to your heart's content."

"Can I grouse over dessert in Chijou?"

"Don't press your luck."

"Well, I suppose I could settle for an anpan from the cafeteria. . . ." Tsuzuki grumbled, but he couldn't quite stifle his grin. And he gestured for Tatsumi to lead the way.

Once Tatsumi had turned his back, Tsuzuki opened his fist. Free, a little butterfly fluttered out, whole once more. Meandering mindlessly on its way to the next flower, the next perch, as if it had felt nothing, remembered nothing.

 _Yes. Very much the same._ Death lost its sting when even the tiniest insects here couldn't die. Couldn't be reborn. Couldn't move up the ladder of transmigration, or ever attain the reward of complete nothingness that he could only pray awaited him at the end of his service. If it ever came to an end. . . .

Perhaps he did owe Muraki for opening his eyes, for he could see the truth of this place much more clearly now: When nothing was able to truly die, life lost something precious too.

* * *

Tsuzuki was different.

Then again, given what untold things he had been through in Muraki's care, Tatsumi should have been surprised if Tsuzuki had returned to them the same. Whatever the doctor had done, Tatsumi wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know, but he was certain it was unforgivable.

He could hear it in the message left on his phone from a number he didn't recognize. He could feel it in the anguish in Tsuzuki's voice: "I need you, Tatsumi. It's bad, I'm afraid. Real bad. You remember the sparrow's nest on Crow Street?" It seemed he had been on the verge of breaking down with every word, yet, in his urgency, he managed to get them all out clearly.

 _Sparrow's nest, huh?_ How could Tatsumi forget?

The sign on the door had said Suzu's, though even that may not have been the official name. Just the name of the Mama-san who ran the joint. A hostess bar long before such things ever became franchised, or dragged into the light. A place for survivors of the war to commiserate over their new lives, as another year passed of bearing the unbearable; and where a couple of shinigami who had gone through their own kind of hell together and come back out the other side could pretend for a night that they were just as miserably mortal as the rest of the clientele.

He and Tsuzuki—he could never remember who started it—had taken to calling it their sparrow's nest, a pun on the proprietress's name, on account of their spending half their time there up on the roof, no matter the time of year. Watching downtown Kyoto grow through the decades, counting construction cranes while sake or whiskey sat warming their bellies, until one year the blinking lights reached over their heads.

The crumbling pre-war building on Karasuma that had housed Suzu's had come down decades ago, replaced by a sleek department store that took up half the block.

But it made sense that Tsuzuki would still see it as a place of refuge. Tatsumi did not waste time wandering around the lower levels, but teleported directly to the roof. For only a moment, scanning unsuccessfully for Tsuzuki's face among the rooftop garden crowd, did he doubt he had the right place. But in a section that was closed to the public, he found his quarry, crouched down behind an air conditioning unit, jumpy and covered in drying blood.

There was so much Tatsumi wanted to say. Not least of which, to ask how Tsuzuki had managed to escape. But all that seemed to come out was, "Tsuzuki, thank god. . . ."

"It isn't mine." Tsuzuki must have noticed how Tatsumi's gaze zeroed in on the blood. "Not most of it anyway—"

If it had been, it wouldn't have been cause for worry. But then, Tsuzuki hadn't said it as reassurance, but as a confession.

"When was the last time you ate?" He was trembling so bad, his complexion paler than usual, and Tatsumi could sense the depletion of his energy. But how much was due to shock, and how much to whatever struggle Tsuzuki had been in, he could not know. Tatsumi wanted to ask if the blood was Muraki's—a large part of him hoped very much that it was—but it was at that moment that Tsuzuki's composure finally failed him. He bent over his knees, hid his face from Tatsumi as he mumbled about something he had to do, apologizing profusely. Tatsumi couldn't make it out very well. Except for Tsuzuki's plea that Tatsumi not leave him. That reached him crystal-clear.

"I'll get you something from the food court downstairs," Tatsumi said, placing a hand on Tsuzuki's shoulder as though that might stand as promise enough to return. "A change of clothes while I'm at it." The hole blasted through one leg of Tsuzuki's trousers was especially disconcerting. They didn't want anyone in Enma-cho to see him in that state, and start asking questions Tsuzuki surely was nowhere near ready to answer. "Then we can go back to my apartment until you feel well enough to return home."

Tsuzuki nodded like a child, and Tatsumi just had to trust that meant he would stay put. Once again, Tatsumi thought, he was cleaning up Tsuzuki's mess. Burying the evidence. Abetting the fugitive—or murderer, he feared; he hadn't the courage to ask Tsuzuki where the blood _had_ come from. The poor man was so traumatized and weak, all Tatsumi dared to do was shelter and feed him, lest he and his good intentions cause any further damage. _Like a sparrow fallen from the nest. . . ._

Now that the mask was firmly back in place, Tatsumi wondered if he had missed his chance for an honest explanation. The Tsuzuki he'd met this morning had acted as though nothing particularly horrible had happened to him.

 _Though maybe we owe that to Kurosaki's influence._ Tatsumi so wanted to believe that.

He shot to his feet when Tsuzuki emerged from his audience with Enma, not sure how to take the half-smile that rested generically on Tsuzuki's lips. "Well?"

"I'm clean," Tsuzuki said. "Enma could find no evidence that Muraki booby-trapped my soul in any way."

"I find that hard to believe," Tatsumi said, though he did find himself exhaling in relief. He had been certain those two disembodied heads that sat before the throne would have sniffed out something. Something damning enough to put Tsuzuki away indefinitely.

"I know. I hardly believe it myself. You'd think Muraki would have left some trace of his intentions in there, but there wasn't so much as a single curse." Tsuzuki crossed his arms over his chest, as though it were some abstract matter the two were discussing, rather than his own immortal soul and shinigami body. "So, it looks like I'm clear to go back to work."

"We'll see what the chief has to say about that. I would recommend desk duty myself, just until we can prove to His Highness that you have no intention of abandoning your post and potentially compromising this realm again."

"Actually, Enma had something to say about that, too." And so saying, Tsuzuki handed over a little scroll, tied with official sashing. "He says I can get back out there in the field immediately—"

"You're certain?" This may have been the outcome Tatsumi was privately hoping for, but it still didn't seem like a wise idea, considering the circumstances of Tsuzuki's absence. Tatsumi didn't think Enma was losing his mental faculties in his ancientness, so just what was he driving at with this decision?

"So long as I submit to wearing a tracker," Tsuzuki amended. "A tracking spell, to be precise. That way someone with a little more accountability than myself can say where I am at all times, even if we're not physically together in the same place."

"I've heard of such spells," Tatsumi said as he glanced over the text of the order. Supposedly they worked even across worlds, and rendered any attempt to disguise one's whereabouts by supernatural means futile. The only reason they weren't utilized more often was that the mental intimacy the bond between tracker and trackee required had a tendency to backfire explosively for employee productivity.

Luckily for Summons, Tatsumi and Tsuzuki already knew enough of each other's secrets and had settled most of their differences in the past that Tatsumi didn't foresee the spell causing any major disruptions for their respective work. "And I would be honored, Tsuzuki."

He wasn't expecting that to garner the laugh it did. He tried not to be offended, but wasn't entirely successful.

"I'm sorry if I made it seem like I was asking you," Tsuzuki said. "I mean, I'd trust you more than just about anyone to keep me on a short leash. But Enma already had someone else in mind. And he was pretty adamant."

* * *

A gentle touch stirred Hisoka from his sleep. Feeling heavy and content, he wanted nothing more than to slip back into slumber, and bury himself deeper in the sheets, warm and decadent beneath his naked skin.

That touch had other plans, however, as it slithered up the inside of his thigh. His legs parted in welcome, his hips lifting to meet it. He trembled with his desire, ached with anticipation. And when that touch slid inside him, he could not contain his groan of pleasure, nor was there any need to feel ashamed of it.

 _Wait. Where am I? How did I get here? What the hell is going on?_

Lips pressed against his shoulder blade, hot breath leaving its moisture against his skin. He shivered, the tension behind his navel twanging like a plucked bow. But he couldn't tell who was kissing him, and that concerned him. The phallus inside him pushed deeper, sending pleasure rippling through him like a current, leaving him gasping for more—but he didn't want more! He didn't want this! even as his flesh and the sounds coming from his own throat insisted he did.

What was the last thing he could remember? That's right. Tsuzuki.

Tsuzuki was in his bed. Hisoka had put him there when he'd drunk himself stupid, and, like an idiot, climbed in with him. Touched him. Clung to him. When Tsuzuki was asleep, when his defenses were down. This had to be _his_ dream. Tsuzuki said he'd done things while in Muraki's custody, things he wasn't proud of. Things his mental shield had said he didn't want Hisoka to know. Was this the sort of thing he'd been trying to hide? Or only just where Hisoka's own suspicious mind hastened to go?

Never mind that. It wasn't Hisoka's right to judge. If this was just some backwash of Tsuzuki's dream, it ought to be easy enough to wake up from. Just being aware of that fact should have been enough to shake him out of it.

But it didn't do the trick. And now that Hisoka was certain where he was, he recognized the press of Muraki's mouth against his skin all too well for his comfort. Could see those pale fingers digging into his hip even through his shut eyes, transmitting Muraki's emotions into him like wires jammed under his skin. Hisoka wished he could say this cruel wanting was something entirely new and forced upon him, but even that was uncomfortably comfortable and familiar.

"You resist, pretend this isn't what you want," that hated voice murmured at his ear, deafening over Hisoka's cries, "but your body doesn't lie. It knows what it desires most. This curse that binds us works both ways, as you already know, delivering pain . . ."

Hisoka felt the scars respond at the mention of them, summoned from deep inside him. Their lines glowed to the surface, a flush across his skin. He braced himself for the excruciating pain—but it never came.

"Or pleasure," Muraki purred, as the curse did its work just so. "More pleasure than you can bear. . . ."

This wasn't right! In so many ways, it wasn't right! This should have been Tsuzuki's dream, not his. So then why was Muraki speaking to him as though he knew damn well he was Hisoka?

And why wouldn't his body respond the way he wanted it to? Muraki pushed deeper into him, impossibly deep. He must have added his fingers because Hisoka felt like he was being opened wide, and filled completely. Yet where was the pain? He wanted more so badly he thought he would burst with need, but that was a different kind of agony than what should have wracked him. The heat was building at the base of his spine with every mind-numbing thrust until he feared it would become an inferno and consume him, and still he was allowed no release. _More than you can bear._ He didn't know how he could bear what he felt already! The words echoed in his ears, slithered around his mind—

He could swear, Muraki was many things, but he had never sounded like _that._ Like a hissing viper.

No sooner did the word enter Hisoka's thoughts than a vision he knew he wasn't supposed to see, of teeth bared in righteous disgust, flashed across his mind. Muraki seized the back of his neck, his fingers like jaws around Hisoka's vertebrae, nails like fangs, but the violence of it only succeeded in wrenching another cry of ecstasy from his lips. _Stop this, Hisoka! This isn't you. You don't have to give in. Don't listen to him! This is_ _your_ _mind. You_ _can control this!_

But it certainly didn't feel that way. Because whatever foreign body was fucking him, it didn't feel like any part of the human anatomy he was familiar with. Where it brushed against the back of his thigh, against the bottoms of his feet, Hisoka felt only smooth scales. Scales all the way down. Was he entirely sure he still had legs and feet, for that matter? That it wasn't his own body he felt, coiling around itself in a living Gordian knot?

And yet even the fear of realizing he did not know the answer was not enough to make him want it to stop. "Admit it!" Muraki hissed, his false eye with its unnatural pupil burning a hole through Hisoka's mind. "You'll never be rid of me. And you wouldn't have it any other way."

 _WAKE UP, DAMN IT!_

That silver eye suddenly blazed demantoid-green and black and red, flashing sharp and cold like a stiletto through the brain; and Hisoka was jolted awake, feeling as though he had been slammed back into his own body.

His own apartment came rushing back into focus. His own bed beneath him, and he, wearing the same clothes he'd gone to sleep in.

But Tsuzuki was gone. The depression where he had lain, already cold. Sunlight was pushing against the blinds, and the digital clock on the bedside table said it was well after eight o'clock.

Hisoka breathed a long sigh of relief, and pushed himself up. At least he felt fairly confident that Tsuzuki had missed his little episode and the embarrassing erection that went along with it. Thankfully that was fading as quickly the dream, and all the confusing emotion of it that had been forced upon him.

But the visions weren't so eager to leave. The last one in particular disturbed him. It was one thing to come to grips with the knowledge that the yatonokami was an inextricable part of who he was. Quite another to be tormented by that creature's face in the same dream as Muraki's, and find the two melding together so well in his mind as to be inseparable.

Was Muraki using his curse to contact Hisoka while he dreamed? He'd never done that before, at least not like this, or at such a great distance. Had Muraki planted a piece of himself in Tsuzuki's consciousness, the same way Yatonokami had in his own? Hisoka didn't want to think that might even be possible. Because if it was, how would they exorcise it? Worse: What would happen to Tsuzuki if they couldn't?

But it was just as disturbing to think that, just when Hisoka had started to enjoy dreams that _didn't_ involve his rape and murder, Yatonokami might be purposefully bringing them back again, just to torment his host.

"I thought we agreed we were supposed to protect each other from shit like this," Hisoka said aloud in his otherwise empty apartment. "If that was your attempt, you're doing a piss-poor job. We talked about this. About being in this together? Are you even listening to me?"

But the snake was silent. No thoughts that were not his own surfaced in Hisoka's mind.

 _That better not have been your doing,_ he sent Yatonokami a final time. And then got up, eager to get a start on the day and put the nightmare firmly behind him. Beginning with a cold, purifying shower and the largest mug of coffee he could find.

Part of him expected to arrive at the office and find yesterday was all just a dream, and Tsuzuki still missing.

But there Tsuzuki was, back at his old desk and appearing to actually be doing work.

"What are you doing here this early?" Hisoka asked him.

At which Tsuzuki snorted. "Early. . . . That's funny, Hisoka. It's almost nine. You're the one who slept in." And he flashed Hisoka so charming a grin that Hisoka wanted to punch him in the arm, just for making him miss it so much the last several months.

"Besides," Tsuzuki went on, "you know I had that meeting with Enma this morning. Went better than expected, I'm happy to report—but that probably goes without saying, seeing as I haven't been smitten. Er, I hope you don't mind I started reading _The Constant Gardener_. I saw it on your desk when I came in and couldn't resist," he clarified at the lost look on Hisoka's face.

"That's okay," Hisoka said, feeling like a robot. He'd forgotten he bought that the last time he went on a grocery run in Chijou, not long before he ran off to Gensoukai. Now that Tsuzuki was back, it felt like ages ago.

"I was hoping from the title it would be about gardening. Turns out it's a lot sadder than that even, and I'm only a few chapters in."

"Why would gardening be sad?"

Hisoka had only asked to make conversation, only realizing once the words had left his mouth that he should have just kept it shut. Damn it, but he wasn't awake enough for this.

"You're kidding, right?" Tsuzuki said with sudden intensity, leaning forward in his seat. "Clearly you're not a gardener! Only a person who doesn't garden would ask that question!"

"You know what's sad is this conversation," Terazuma piped up from across the room, where he had his feet up on his desk and an amused grin on his face. If he'd had a bowl of popcorn balanced on his knees, the feeling Hisoka had that he was being used as cheap entertainment would have been complete. "And to think I'd almost begun to miss this."

" _That's_ sad," Wakaba said to him, but Terazuma assured her, "I'm better now, though. A little crazy goes a long way."

If all were back to normal, that would be Tsuzuki's cue to throw some sarcastic barb Terazuma's way, and some stupid, petty fight would erupt and just as quickly fizzle out.

But nothing, Hisoka had to remind himself, was normal anymore. And he almost leaped out of his skin when he turned back to Tsuzuki, and saw him already on his feet, and standing mere inches from Hisoka, clutching a little scroll in both hands. "Jesus, Tsuzuki—"

"There's something I need to ask you, Hisoka. It's very important, so I want you to give it some serious thought before you answer."

Across the room, two pairs of burning, female ears perked up.

Do we have to do this now, Hisoka felt like complaining. His morning coffee had barely had time to start taking effect. But he sighed his resignation, and grumbled, "Let's hear it."

"Part of my hearing today was to determine whether I was fit to return to work," said Tsuzuki. The longer he spoke, the greater significance the scroll in his clutches seemed to take on: "Well, Enma deemed me clear to return to my Summons duties, but only under one condition. He said the department couldn't risk me running off and going incommunicado again, so I can return to having a full case load only if I'm fitted with a tracking spell. That way I'll be easy to locate at any time.

"And he wants you to be the one to do it." And so saying, Tsuzuki grabbed Hisoka's hand and thrust the scroll into it.

Hisoka unrolled it and gave it a glance over. "Why me? Why not Tatsumi, or someone else who's known you longer?" Someone who wasn't in large part to blame for Tsuzuki disappearing in the first place, and wasn't currently in the hot seat for defying a travel ban.

" _Because,_ " Tsuzuki whined, "you and I have the closest connection that I've had with any partner. You've also lasted longer than any other partner I've ever had, this little hiatus aside. . . ."

"Little" wasn't the word Hisoka would have used to describe it—nor, for that matter, was "hiatus"—but he resisted the urge to interrupt.

"Just as importantly, you're empathic, which Enma believes will help you pinpoint my location even if we happen to be in different worlds."

"But you're not thinking of running off again, are you? Seems to me, this tracking spell is only necessary if you plan to run off."

Tsuzuki put up his hands in surrender. "I'm not planning to run off. Think of it as an extra safety measure. Enma still can't be sure Muraki didn't plant something in my head. He wasn't able to find anything when he spoke to me, and I don't feel like I've been tampered with in any way, but that's no guarantee that nothing's there."

"Trust me," Terazuma said as he squeezed between them on the way to the coffee machine, "if it's Tsuzuki's head we're talking about, there's nothing there."

Tsuzuki's smile fell. "Now, really, I've only been back a day, just what good does he think a comment like that . . ."

After giving Enma's orders a thorough read, Hisoka said, "Alright, I guess I'll do it. It's not like I have a choice anyway, and the reasoning behind it checks out. I just don't like how . . . personal this whole thing feels. I would essentially be able to spy on you whenever I wanted. You understand that, right? So if we do this, you'll be giving up your right to privacy."

"If it's you, though, Hisoka, I don't mind. Like we agreed before: no more secrets."

"Then there's all the stuff in here about 'mutual assuredness' and 'two minds becoming as one'. . . . Are we talking about a tracking spell or a marriage contract here?"

Terazuma sprayed coffee as he burst out laughing, but Tsuzuki determinedly ignored him. He brushed off Hisoka's concerns with a little wave. "Nah, it's nothing of the sort, Hisoka! Just don't think of it that way! It's really more of a LoJack or ankle monitor sort of thing. Besides, we're both guys, so it couldn't possibly be like marriage!"

"Men married men all the time hundreds of years ago," Hisoka said with a skeptical glare, "so that doesn't make me feel any better. Just because it isn't legal _now_ —"

"Natsume! Help me out here. This tracking thing is a lot like yours and K's sealing ceremony, right?"

"Oh, sure," the bespectacled young man said. "Except there weren't any words or symbols exchanged when we did it. It's different with cats. She just stared me in the eyes—stared right down into the very depths of my soul. No words were needed to say what we had to say to one another. No words _could_ say what we meant. And right then, I knew she understood me like I understood myself, and that we had a connection the likes of which I would never have with another human being. . . ."

Then he gave his own words some thought, and had to admit: "Nope. Sorry, guys. You're _so_ getting married."

"You know that means you're saying you married a cat, right?"

"Hey, I'm not proud of it, but it's not like we ever consummated it or anything, so where's the problem?"

" _It's finally happening! Hold everything, guys—IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING!_ "

Great. Hisoka felt whatever hope he still had in him of rescuing this conversation from the abyss of humiliation vanish in a puff of smoke. Because the last two people he needed in on it were Saya and Yuma. "I thought this day would never come!" said the latter, clutching her hands together in a prayer of thanks to whatever god had made this happen, while Saya was saying "We should make a cake! You can't spell _kekkon_ without 'cake'!"

"For the last time," Hisoka tried, "we're not—"

But the mob overruled him. "Yeah, you know," Terazuma was saying, gesturing with his coffee mug, "now that you mention cake, it's been a while since we had a proper office party. I say if this prevert's gonna tie the knot, we at least get to make the most of it. You know, finally get some appreciation for all the hard work we do around here."

"Potluck only," Tatsumi put in his two cents. "We don't have room in the budget for catering."

"We don't have to dress up all formal for this, do we?" said Watari, just wandering in.

And Tsuzuki told him, "I think business casual is probably enough."

"You should be in business casual every day you show up at this office," Konoe grumbled from the doorway. "The only reason I never reprimand you louts for your lackadaisical attire is that you're already dead."

"I can officiate, if you'd like," said Wakaba, raising a hand. "I assisted my father with plenty of wedding ceremonies at our shrine, so I pretty much know the drill."

"But it's not—"

Saya: "Just leave the decorations to me and Yuma. We've been planning this for a while now and we have the perfect colors already picked out for Tsusoka."

Terazuma: " _HAHAHA,_ wait, wait, I think I missed something. The fuck is 'Tsusoka'?!"

Yuma: "Do you think there's still time to send out invites?"

Tsuzuki: "Nah, I think it's best if it's a small ceremony. Friends and work family only. I don't want to overwhelm Hisoka with too many emotions all in one place. Right, Hisoka?"

But Hisoka could only stare at him and shake his head. How many times? How many times did he have to put up with this humiliation before Tsuzuki got it through his thick skull Hisoka didn't appreciate being made the office laughing stock? Maybe it would have been better if Tsuzuki had just stayed away.

"Idiot," Hisoka muttered, and made a hasty exit from the Summons office.

* * *

He didn't care how it looked. He didn't care that they were probably all going to be talking about him because of how he had reacted, wondering if their joking had hit a little too close to the mark.

Well, OK, maybe he did care—but there was nothing Hisoka could do about it now. He just had to get out of there. He had to get away before . . . before . . .

What? Before he couldn't hold the truth in any longer and it came bursting out of him in front of everyone? He didn't even know if it _was_ the truth, or if it had all just been a side effect of Tsuzuki's absence. Absence made the heart grow fonder, right? So that must have been all it was. He was just missing Tsuzuki so much he managed to convince himself that his longing was something other than what it really was.

Surely Zepar had merely been preying on that when he infiltrated Hisoka's thoughts. He was just messing with me, Hisoka told himself, that's what devils _do._ Manipulating me to get what he wanted. And that particular devil's whole schtick was to imitate a person's loved one and seduce them, so Hisoka could bet Zepar wasn't going to let the chance to convince someone like him that he was deeply in lust with the person he cared about most pass him by. All those things he'd made Hisoka feel—it hadn't meant anything. It _couldn't_ have been a reflection of anything Hisoka genuinely felt. Yet here he was, letting the illusion get under his skin, taking it to heart, leading himself on until he actually believed there was some truth to it.

The feeling that he was about to be hit by a panic attack came on strong again. Hisoka ducked into a supply room down the hall before it could. He paced among the shelves full of printer paper reams and old computer peripherals, breathing hard and trying to force the panic to just hit him already so he could get it over with before anyone came looking for him.

But it wouldn't. And that just pissed him off more.

"Hisoka, I'm so sorry," Tsuzuki's voice sounded behind him, making Hisoka jump. "I shouldn't have let them go on like that with the marriage jokes. I swear, I genuinely forgot in all the excitement that you might be sensitive—"

"How can you be so easygoing about all this!"

Hisoka hadn't meant for the hurt he felt inside to come out so plainly in his words. But once it did, he didn't feel the least bit bad about that.

Even though it took Tsuzuki aback. Like he'd been slapped. "What do you mean?"

"You show up again after nine months of _nothing_ —just waltz right back into Summons like nothing happened, like nothing's changed. But _everything's_ changed, Tsuzuki! You have no idea the shit we've all been through because of you, but you come in acting all business-as-usual. . . ."

Hisoka regretted those words the moment he saw Tsuzuki's cheery expression melt to sorrow. There he went again, thinking only of himself and his own feelings. Forgetting that Tsuzuki had spent the last few months being held captive by Muraki. Being forced to do god-knows-what—and Hisoka knew Muraki well enough he had a pretty good guess. Tsuzuki must have been traumatized by his experience, Hisoka didn't see how he couldn't be, and adopting a mask of devil-may-care normalcy was all he could do to keep from succumbing to it.

 _And I had to go and tear that down too._ Hisoka wanted to kick himself for his selfishness. "Now _I'm_ sorry," he said, hoping this time that he _was_ projecting and that Tsuzuki might feel the sincerity of his remorse. "This all started because I blamed you for not being there for _me_ when _I_ needed you. I didn't waste much time repeating that mistake, did I?"

He wasn't expecting his admission of guilt to be met with confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"After the Livertaker case," Hisoka said. "Don't you remember, at the cafe in Kumamoto? I got mad at you for not coming to save me from Fujisawa, and not a day later, you took off without a word."

He shook his head at himself. It was so long ago, but that was no excuse. The amount of time past didn't lessen his culpability. "Ever since then, I couldn't help thinking how I'd do things differently if I could do that day over again. I knew it wasn't your fault. Muraki and Fujisawa had that night planned out to the smallest detail, and the two of us only acted out our parts exactly as they wanted us to. But I was hurt, and I took that out on you, not thinking that all the while Fujisawa was with me, Muraki was making you suffer too. Like he always does."

Like he'd been making Tsuzuki suffer these last few months. Hisoka had no right to try and diminish that.

But Tsuzuki didn't seem to care about that just now. "Is that really what you thought, all this time? You think I left because you blamed me for what Fujisawa did to you?"

Then it was Hisoka's turn to stare confusedly. Well, wasn't it?

Tsuzuki laughed, albeit sadly. "Hisoka, I left to pursue a lead! I found out who the Ukyou Mrs. Komatsu mentioned was and what she meant to Muraki, and I thought if I confronted her about him, she might give me some information that would help me track him down and kill him once and for all. Somehow I got this crazy notion in my head that, if she meant that much to him, I could hurt him like he hurt me. Like he hurt the people I care about."

"You planned to use her to get revenge." The very thought ought to have repulsed Hisoka—Ukyou was a mortal, and, as far as he knew, only guilty of associating with Muraki—but so deep was his own hatred of that man that he couldn't find it in him to fault Tsuzuki's logic, even if he knew that it was wrong.

Tsuzuki nodded. "But I couldn't go through with it. Once I stopped seeing her as bait and got to know her as a human being, a living being, and an individual with her own mind, I couldn't bring myself to do her harm just to get at Muraki."

"But you stayed."

"I stayed. I guess I convinced myself that she might still be of some use to me, and by then I'd already broken half a dozen of the most sacred commandments about what shinigami are _not_ supposed to do. I knew if I surrendered myself to Enma's authority I would be severely punished, and I would still be no closer to killing Muraki. I had to stay and see things through, and I really did believe ending him was the right thing to do. At the time."

As if with a sudden chill, Tsuzuki crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze turning inward; and Hisoka thought for a moment he could almost feel the dark house in the Tokyo suburb around him—whole, not as he saw it the last time—and the weight of conflicting ethical dilemmas on his soul.

"I believed that the only way I could be sure Muraki would never hurt anyone again was if I killed him myself, even if it went against Enma's wishes. And the only way I could do _that_ was through Ukyou. If Muraki wanted to stay hidden, he would make sure no one, not even Enma, was able to find him. But maybe, just maybe, I could coax him out of his hole. I could do something unforgivable that even he wouldn't be able to ignore. I could destroy the only thing he cared about, like he did to me."

It should have been a weight off of Hisoka's shoulders, to know that he wasn't the one to blame for Tsuzuki's disappearance. For the better part of a year, he'd let this whole world blame him for it, and managed to convince himself he deserved their disappointment.

But hearing Tsuzuki confess how he had almost committed the unthinkable on an innocent mortal woman, and for revenge, just replaced one guilty weight with another.

 _It_ _was_ _my fault, though. In a way._ It was the desire to avenge what Muraki had done to Hisoka, among others, that had driven Tsuzuki's actions. And it was because Hisoka had begged Tsuzuki to stay, to remain bound to his miserable existence, for his sake, that the Livertaker case had even been able to occur.

And now he, Hisoka, expected to be consoled for his hardships? He could not have had it more backwards.

He pulled Tsuzuki to him, wrapping Tsuzuki in his arms, and did not let him pull away when Tsuzuki tried. It was the least Hisoka could do, to apologize for everything Tsuzuki had been through. Whether those things were on account of him or not.

And still, he could feel Tsuzuki's reluctance to return it. After a moment, Tsuzuki braced one hand against Hisoka's back; but his energy still insisted he didn't deserve this. He wanted this warmth, craved it in fact, but didn't feel he had earned it.

"Tsuzuki—"

"You don't have to say it," Tsuzuki whispered against his hair.

But Hisoka did. He had to put the words to life, release them into the air between them, provide them with a witness, or it would be as though his feelings had never existed. And he told Tsuzuki so—if in much simpler terms. "I love you."

"Hisoka, you don't—"

"Take that whichever way you wish, Tsuzuki, but it's the truth." Just as long as he didn't ask Hisoka to clarify it. He wouldn't know how to begin. He wasn't sure his feelings really needed clarification anyway. Simple "love" encompassed a lot of different virtues. And sins, too. "And if I never get another chance to say it, then that's all the more reason to tell you now."

Tsuzuki took his shoulders and gently pushed him to arm's length; and this time Hisoka was content to let him. He couldn't take the words back now. Just like he couldn't take back what he'd said in Kyoto, or everything that had resulted. Tsuzuki would have to face that someone cared as deeply about him as he did for others, whether he felt he deserved it or not.

"I would be happy to be your ankle monitor," Hisoka said. "Or whatever you want to call it in this situation. I already know more about you than anyone should know about another person." _And I haven't run away yet._ "I can't see how being connected by a tracking spell will change things between us very much."

To his relief, that seemed to reassure Tsuzuki enough that he smiled again, and nodded.

"Maybe we can just tone down the marriage talk? It's _way_ too much pressure, this being only your second day back. Everything still feels unreal. Like we all just dodged a huge bullet."

Tsuzuki laughed. Though it almost sounded to Hisoka more like a sob of relief. "For you, Hisoka, gladly."


	27. Devil's due

Keijou was dreaming he was on a case with Agrippina when the interruption came. Before he woke, he saw her face slowly losing its scars and morphing into Sakuraiji's until the two were impossible to separate.

But it was only because Sakuraiji's was the only human face he'd seen in the last few months. He was starting to forget what his own partner, his lover, had looked like. And that was unforgivable. If those who existed forgot about those loved ones who no longer did, wasn't it like they had never been? If he had gone the same way as Agrippina in that explosion, would there be anyone who cared enough to remember that _he_ had existed?

He bolted upright at the violent creaking of the cell door, sad to be pulled away from the Agrippina in his dream, but thankful for a distraction from all the tangled emotion that went with it.

Ukyou nearly dropped the book she was reading in surprise. "What's going on?" the two asked simultaneously as Focalor's pale face appeared in the doorway.

"Get up and take nothing with you," the devil said. "We've got to move the two of you. Now."

They did as told without complaint, Keijou steadying Ukyou when she nearly tripped over their former jailers, the demons' monstrous forms sprawled and unconscious on the stone floor outside the cell.

"Where are you taking us? What's this all about?" Ukyou asked, taking the words right out of Keijou's mouth as they hurried to keep up. Focalor set a demanding pace. But though her heart was hammering with fearful excitement, Ukyou dared not ask him to slow down.

"You're in danger if you stay here," Focalor said back over his shoulder to her. Even he sounded a little winded by their pace. Doubtless the infirmities of his vessel catching up with him. "There's been a coup, and I can no longer protect you in that cell."

"A coup?" Ukyou breathed, thinking with a shudder about Zepar. Keijou said, "Who rebelled?"

The grin the devil shot them was enough to chill even the shinigami's bones. "I did," said Focalor.

He led them to a spiraling staircase within a staircase, pushing them abruptly back into the shadows as the sound of charging, heavy footsteps came their way. They could hear armor clinking against scales, the animal snorts and growls of the demon army passing unseen only meters away, and trusted what he said was true.

The alarm had already been raised. Ashtaroth must have known by now her prize was loose. She would not stop until it was secured again—and when that happened, Keijou thought, his presence might no longer be deemed necessary.

He wanted to give Focalor a piece of his mind for threatening his very existence with this reckless, selfish act of defiance. How was a lone, unarmed shinigami out of his element and a washed-up devil in a rotting corpse supposed to stand a chance against the will of a ruler of Hell? But now wasn't the time for fisticuffs. While Sakuraiji still lived, their priority was to get her to safety. And as he had no idea where in Hell he even was, "Okay, what's the plan now, O brilliant leader?"

"I get you far away from here. Both of you."

Keijou must have had some endemic parasite stuck in his ear canal. He couldn't possibly have heard that right.

Ukyou didn't quite believe him either. "You mean to another cell? Another part of the city?"

"How is that going to make a difference?" Keijou jumped in. "Wouldn't your enemies just find us again?"

"No." Now it was Focalor's turn to look at them like they were daft. "I mean out of this world, out of Hell! You promised you would keep Dr. Sakuraiji safe, Keijou."

It took a second before he realized he should respond. "Yeah?"

Focalor gritted his teeth in impatience. "Well, here's your chance to prove your word. I need you to take the doctor to Meifu—"

"Why not my world?" said Ukyou. Why couldn't they just let her go home?

"Because there's nothing to stop Ashtaroth from hunting you down in your world!" Focalor growled. "It _has_ to be Meifu," he said to Keijou. "It has to be Enma-cho. Nowhere else. That is the only place the doctor can be safe from Ashtaroth's reach."

"Okay," said Keijou. "But you can't send us there directly from here. The wards are designed to keep out any traffic coming from Hell, even if we're not demons ourselves."

"But I can send you to the Living World," Focalor grinned. "The very moment you arrive, don't hesitate. Take her back to your peers and guard her with your lif—er, whatever it is you dead people value most. Is that understood?

"But before we can get you there, there's one little problem I need your help with. This level is warded also, except to prevent the likes of you two from teleporting _out_. Lucky for you, I can get you to an area of the city that is _not_ protected thusly, and you can make your jump from there. I just require one little favor first. Think of it as . . . a reward. For all my goodwill."

"Name it," Ukyou said. With freedom in sight, she would have given almost anything at that moment to ensure it wasn't taken away again. "Just get us out of here."

"Not you, Doctor." Focalor glared at her. "I'm talking to muscle-head over here. Except, as he's so fond of reminding me, it's against his religion to negotiate with demons."

"God!" Keijou hissed, "this isn't the time! If you say you can get us out of here in one piece, I think I can afford one little favor. What is it you want from me?"

"Just a little kiss."

At first, Keijou didn't know what to say. Then he couldn't help laughing. "You've gotta be joking."

Ukyou, however, did not look so amused. "Well?" she said, gesturing for him to get to it.

Which Keijou had no intention of doing. "Why not her?"

"I'm not kissing that!" said Ukyou, at the same time that Focalor said, "It has to be you."

"Nuh-uh." Keijou backed away. "Not a chance." He didn't like the way that gash in Focalor's cheek was staring at him either. He could almost see the teeth behind it. . . .

Focalor sighed. "Look, we can stand here all day while you deal with your machismo issues. But a second ago you said one little favor was no problem. So which is it? Do you want to get out of here or not?"

And as much as Keijou loathed to admit it, he didn't see any way he could worm his way out of this. Sakuraiji's tugging on the sleeve of his great coat, practically pushing him toward Focalor, was impossible to ignore. Whatever temporary discomfort this might cost _him, she_ was still mortal, and deserved to get out of this place more than anything else. "Fine!" he spat. "Whatever gets you off, man. Just as long as you keep your end of the bargain when it's over."

"I will."

But that assurance didn't make going through with it any easier. Keijou took several quick, deep breaths, steeled himself, and, avoiding eye contact, leaned forward. It took him two tries before he finally had the guts to just do it, and pressed his lips to Focalor's. In a second, it was over, and, in retrospect, not actually as awful as he had been anticipating—

Then a cold hand was gripping the root of his ponytail hard, Focalor's other arm around Keijou's waist, securing him in place. There was nowhere Keijou could go, he could barely move, and the devil's mouth was against his, heavy and insistent. For a brief moment, Keijou could almost forget it was another dude who had him lip-locked, so passionate was the kiss. But then Focalor pushed his tongue into Keijou's mouth, and Keijou nearly gagged on the metallic, rotten-fishy taste that overwhelmed his senses. And on the devil's tongue, which seemed so impossibly long Keijou could have sworn he felt it nudge against his tonsils.

He struggled to get out of the other man's grip, which had become as hard to pry off as a bear trap. And, when he finally succeeded in wrenching himself away, tried to wipe that foul taste off his tastebuds with his sleeve. "The fuck was that! You said a kiss, not that you were going to sweep my throat like it was a chimney!"

But Focalor had already moved on, as though the whole episode had never happened. "Keep close," he said as he waved them out of cover after him. "I can guarantee you'll be lost in this place without my guidance."

* * *

Zepar knew, he just knew, everyone else was on the wrong track.

As he rounded the corner behind the phalanx of armed guards, he caught a tangled trace of emotion like the scent of summer blossoms on a winter wind: It didn't belong here.

Sakuraiji Ukyou. It had to be her. He knew the taste of human fear, was well versed in the nuances of that particular emotion like some were versed in the subtle differences in vintages of merlot. And hers seemed to have forward notes of . . . ah, yes: hope. That most delicious of all human emotions. She was close—close by and close to what she sought. But she was deluded.

Zepar let the guards go on ahead of him and disappear around the corner. He followed the trail of human hope like a hound on a scent, and before long was rewarded. She was there, the shinigami Keijou at her elbow. And—oh, this was a pleasant surprise—none other than Focalor himself, clearly helping them in the act of escape.

Zepar nearly trembled in his glee. This, what Focalor had handed him, was like a present, and he was going to savor every moment of it.

He followed them in silence, waiting for the right moment when his colleague would hang himself.

Nor did he have to wait long. The trio stopped on a platform that Zepar knew for a fact had no wards to restrict the shinigami's power. But it also had only one exit that led back to Pandemonium, and he, Zepar, was blocking it.

" _Traitor!_ " he accused as he strode openly toward them, pointing at Focalor as if to curse him. His voice rang out over the city, amplified so anyone nearby would hear and be alerted. " _I have found the treasonous snake Focalor and I name him highest enemy of Hell!_ "

Keijou, wisely, chose that moment to teleport out of their realm with Ukyou in tow. But if Zepar regretted letting them go, he quickly got over it. Where could they hide? Even if they escaped to Meifu, Ukyou was mortal. They would not be able to keep her there for long.

What did bother Zepar, however, was the satisfied grin on Focalor's lips. It was an insult to everything they stood for, to think a devil of his rank, to say nothing of his history, would defile himself by helping a shinigami. But Focalor would pay for this transgression. Zepar would make sure of it.

"What do you have to smile about?" he jeered. "You won't be able to weasel your way out of what you deserve this time. Ashtaroth won't forgive you for this."

But Focalor refused to take the bait. And his smile only riled Zepar more.

He seized his colleague by the shirt and yanked him forward, pleased when Focalor faltered on his feet. After all this, he was still just a shade of some former glory, trapped in a decaying meat-suit. But Zepar wasn't above kicking a man when he was down. In fact, he rather enjoyed the experience.

And if all went well, maybe he could use this opportunity to send a message to Paimon as well. He still owed the regent for his earlier offense.

"Send word to King Astaroth," he told the guards when they arrived. "I have caught the Duke Focalor in the act of betraying his master and I expect to take him before the court immediately. He is a disgrace and must be made an example of. Let it be known to all that these acts of defiance will not be tolerated."

* * *

For all Hisoka's misgivings, the ceremony wasn't all that bad. As it turned out, there was no reason to work up angst over whether or not it was like a wedding. It just was what it was. The somber air guaranteed that the only thing he concentrated on was getting the spell right. It wasn't even that romantic. Well, at least it wasn't until they got to the vows.

A human official from Human Resources and a deer-headed paper-pusher from Judgment, sent to oversee that everything was done correctly, were their only witnesses aside from Wakaba. For the former reason alone, Hisoka had worn a suit and tie, and Tsuzuki had actually made an effort to look professional, slicking his hair back for the first time in years. It made him look like a character out of a hard-boiled detective movie from the 1940s, but it was the thought that counted.

He intended to stay. And to make up for his being absent for the greater part of a year with a renewed attention to his work. Even if that dedication to working hard only lasted through the day, Hisoka was grateful to Tsuzuki for it. He still couldn't shake the feeling that all of this had been, in one way or another, his fault. But Tsuzuki was an inspiration to him. A reminder that he could not change what had happened, but he could face it, and make sure he tried harder to avoid the same mistakes going forward. So long as he existed, it was never too late to repent.

Wakaba, in her miko attire, read the ancient words from a script, with the appropriate musical lilt. And, hands clasped over each other's wrists, Hisoka and Tsuzuki in turn spoke the words of the spell they had each spent well into the night before memorizing. At the culmination, pale blue lines glowed upon both their arms, connecting them to one another and seeming to brand themselves into their flesh. Tightening for a brief moment, like zip cords, before disappearing painlessly into them.

That was enough to satisfy Enma's representatives. The doe stamped the proper documentation that showed they had completed the binding with a huge wood-block seal, asked for their signatures, and, thanking them both for their time and cooperation, departed with her colleague.

Wakaba excused herself as well, promising to meet them back at the office. Not without a hearty congratulatory hug for each of them beforehand, however. She tried to hide it from them, but she seemed to be sniffling back tears of happiness when she left.

Which left Tsuzuki and Hisoka to wander back to work on their own, taking their time as they crossed the cherry grove in relative silence.

Not awkward silence, though. More like there didn't seem to be anything that was screaming to be said. They could be comfortable, being quiet together, and that was more of a blessing than Hisoka would have been able to explain to anyone who asked.

"So," Tsuzuki said at one point, "now that that's done, do you feel any different?"

Hisoka had to give the question some thought. "You know, I don't. Do _you_ feel any different?"

"Mm-mm, that's a negative. Wait!" Tsuzuki stopped in mid-stride, and concentrated, as if listening hard for some distant call, before deciding, "Nah, I thought I had for a second, but it was a false alarm."

"Maybe we're not supposed to feel like anything's changed. Maybe that was Enma's whole point in choosing me to watch you. We've already shown each other so much of ourselves that we wouldn't want anyone else to see. How much deeper can two people go, really?"

"Well, there is one way to test it out." Tsuzuki's eyes were sparkling with mischief as he turned toward Hisoka. "The bond is supposed to make it so you know where I am at all times—even if you don't have line of sight, right?"

"Yeah. . . ."

"Well, then! Catch me if you can!" And he vanished, teleporting to god-knew-where.

Only Hisoka _did_ know where. After the requisite sigh and shaking of his head at Tsuzuki's childish games and time-wasting, he extended his feelers, and was surprised to find that he could sense with pinpoint accuracy where in the cherry grove Tsuzuki had teleported to. He knew the exact tree he was hiding behind, could sense its location in the space around him. And that was definitely a new experience. _This must be what a bat or a dolphin feels like._ Though it wasn't really echolocation, either. More like he was seeing the grove through Tsuzuki's eyes, just without the use of his eyes.

No sooner did Hisoka appear right beside him than Tsuzuki jumped again, a smile of surprise on his face right before he disappeared. Hisoka had no problem following him to the next hiding spot, and then the next.

But by about the fifth time, he tripped up. He was sure he'd pinned Tsuzuki's location exactly, but when he got to the tree, no Tsuzuki.

Until the snap of a twig in the upper branches caused him to look up. "That's cheating, Tsuzuki."

"Says who?"

But Tsuzuki took pity on him, and dropped himself down from the limbs of the tree, disturbing the cherry blossoms and causing petals to rain down on both of them like a snow shower. He laughed as he dusted them out of his hair, tousling his 'do and undoing all his work to look professional that morning.

"Anyway, I think we've proven that it works, so Enma shouldn't have anything to worry about, letting us return to Chijou," he said as he beamed down at Hisoka.

As for Hisoka, he was having a hard time remembering the last time he'd seen Tsuzuki made so happy by such simple things. Not just putting on a mask, acting casual to hide his true feelings. These _were_ his true feelings. This was the Tsuzuki he'd first felt the stirrings of infatuation for, Hisoka realized. Taken in by his charisma, his beauty, and his easy nature that Hisoka could never stop envying. This was the Tsuzuki a person would follow to hell and back, for no other reason than that the purity of his soul demanded it.

Hisoka reached out, and Tsuzuki stumbled backwards a step as Hisoka pressed him against the trunk of the tree, and kissed his mouth.

For a moment, taken aback by Hisoka's actions, Tsuzuki let his guard down, and Hisoka felt what he felt. _Finally._ And, _Could this day get any better?_ He felt the gentle pressure of his own lips against Tsuzuki's, and wasn't sure if the delicious warmth that expanded in his core was coming from Tsuzuki too or was his own invention.

Either way, it felt good. It felt right. It felt like something Hisoka should have done a long time ago, and if he regretted anything, it was only that it had taken him this long to work up the nerve. He had been terrified of what he might find when he closed the physical gap between them, but now it seemed he had been afraid all this time of a phantom that never was. Tsuzuki wasn't Muraki. He did not reward Hisoka's honesty with cruel urges, or judgment. Except perhaps to judge himself lucky to be the receiver of Hisoka's affection.

Then reality crept in, Hisoka remembered they were out in the open where anyone could just walk by, and Tsuzuki snapped his head back against the tree trunk, breaking contact. "What brought that on?" he said breathlessly. "A side effect of the spell?"

"I don't think so." Old habits died hard. The blood rushed to Hisoka's cheeks, and he stepped back, embarrassed by what he had done. "I've been thinking about it for some time, and . . . I don't know. I guess I finally just felt like giving it a try. The moment seemed right—and the way you were looking at me. . . ." It didn't help that petals were still drifting down around and onto them, making Tsuzuki look like the romantic hero in some sappy girl's manga.

"It was nice, Hisoka. Really nice." Tsuzuki might not have been able to express his appreciation in many words—perhaps reluctant to say anything that could be taken the wrong way—but Hisoka felt it nonetheless. And thanked Tsuzuki in his soul for not questioning it further.

"Just don't tell anyone at the office, alright? I'm still trying to work things out for myself."

"Hey. Cross my heart." Just for good measure, Tsuzuki traced an X over the breast of his jacket.

Then he smiled like a lech. "Hey, Hisoka. Can you guess what I'm thinking right now?"

Hisoka had to roll his eyes. Honestly, for all Tsuzuki teased him with this lame old joke, it never changed. "You're incorrigible, you know that? I finally work up the nerve to show you how I feel, and _that's_ the first thing that pops into your head?"

Tsuzuki was wounded. "But, but, Hisoka, I thought we had this connection! It's nothing to be offended by—"

"Literally _everything_ reminds you of food, doesn't it?" Hisoka said with a sad shake of his head. "You must be one of those people who watch nature documentaries of lions eating a zebra and think, 'I could really go for a steak.'" And before Tsuzuki could answer that (because Hisoka could see a "Well, yeah" starting to form on his lips): "Come on, then. Let's get back and see what everyone brought to the potluck."

That brightened Tsuzuki right up. "Ha! I knew you knew what I was thinking! To think I doubted you for a second."

When they returned to the office, and stepped into the conference room to see what their coworkers had brought to share, the first thing that hit the eye was a huge, finely decorated, tiered cake.

Hisoka felt his blood pressure rise. "I thought you told Saya and Yuma no cake," he muttered through his teeth.

"I did. Why does it say ' _Welcome home'_ on it?"

"Watson brought it over earlier this morning," Tatsumi supplied as he cut off tiny little slivers of it (in order to make the cake last as along as humanly possible). "It's from the Count. To welcome you back to Enma-cho, Tsuzuki."

"Well, naturally, from the piping," Tsuzuki said. Hisoka's observation that "That explains the ' _darling',_ " went unaddressed.

But Tsuzuki was less than enthused by that news, even if it did look to contain all of his favorite flavors. A strawberry sponge with fresh berries on top of a fluffy buttercream, thick layers of chocolate ganache filling between the pink strata of cake. . . . The sweet scent filling the conference room must have had him salivating, but he managed to mutter to Hisoka, "If the Count heard about our little ceremony already, he'll try to poison us all! Jealous bastard."

"It doesn't taste poisoned," Natsume said around a mouthful of said cake, while he let K, from her shoulder perch, lick a bit of frosting off his fork.

Tsuzuki looked like he desperately wanted to warn him that one never knew when the Count's revenge would kick in.

"And it came with a note," Konoe said. "An invitation, in fact. The Count would like to invite us all to his mansion for a formal gala."

"Oh."

"Probably to celebrate the completion of restorations to the castle," Tatsumi said, as he handed Tsuzuki a plate on which a slice of cake big enough to encompass the entire piped "darling" had been parked. It was big enough to satisfy at least two people, but Hisoka had no doubt Tsuzuki would have no problem finishing it. "Officially he says it's in honor of a new spirit of unity and cooperation between the various departments of the Judgment Bureau, but knowing the Count, he will want to use the opportunity to show off. So, best prepare your witty remarks about crown molding in advance. Just about everyone who's human is expected to attend."

"Even the guys and gals down in Billing got an invite," said Natsume. "Which almost never happens. Must say, it feels good to finally be included."

"So," Konoe huffed as Tsuzuki tore into the cake, "how did everything go this morning?"

As though the magic had intertwined their thoughts as well, the two raised their right arms at the same time and let the faintly glowing, pale blue lines come to the surface for his inspection.

"We've already tested it out and we know it works," Hisoka told the chief while Tsuzuki had his mouth full. "Even without line of sight, I can pinpoint Tsuzuki's location as if he were a flashing blip on a map in my head. Of course, the real test will come when we get back out in the field. We know the spell works in Meifu, but Chijou may be another matter entirely."

Tsuzuki nodded enthusiastically, seconding what he said.

Which seemed to satisfy Konoe. And Tatsumi too, judging by his smile. "Kannuki does an admirable job with these matters," said the former.

"But it might not have worked so well if the two of you hadn't been so close," Tatsumi added. Was it Hisoka's imagination, or did he detect a curious mixture of regret and relief from Tatsumi when he said that? "I'm glad to hear it was a success. I'm sure Enma will be pleased to know he chose well."

"Not as pleased as I am that this means the two of you can get back to work. Before the case load for Sector Two has a chance to pile up any more than it already has."

"Right," Hisoka said, sobering. It couldn't all be cake and reunion parties. A lot had happened since he left for Gensoukai. It would do him well to get back to work, and start mending the rift that had opened up between himself and Tsuzuki. Muraki may still have been out there, but they didn't have to concern themselves with that matter just yet.

"Still," the chief went on, "I'd like to have one of the Gushoushin accompany you on your first case back. Not that _I_ don't trust the two of you, but oversight by a third party should help to allay the concerns some of the other departments still have."

"Todoroki still thinks I should have been retired fifty years ago, I take it," Tsuzuki said between bites of cake.

As if it were a joke. Though to Hisoka, it was too close to the truth to be a laughing matter. Tsuzuki was still considered persona non grata around the Judgment Bureau. As if he were still missing. And given his own behavior of late, Hisoka wondered how long it would take him to reach the same level of disregard. They would have to work extra hard to gain the other departments' trust.

Even if they did everything right from now till eternity, however, Hisoka doubted he could ever change the opinion of someone like Todoroki. As long as that man existed here, he and Tsuzuki would never be free of the shroud of suspicion.

It was just as Hisoka was thinking that that there was a commotion in the hallway outside of Summons's door.

Other shinigami rushed by, some shrugging on Peacekeeper great coats as they went. Other Summons officers hurried to the door, eager for an explanation. From somewhere beyond, they could hear shouting, though it was too far away to make out what it was about.

The telephone rang in Konoe's office. While he moved to answer it, Hisoka tried to disentangle the voices in the hall from one another. A name jumped out at him: _Sakuraiji._

"Tsuzuki—"

He looked over, but Tsuzuki must have heard it at the same time. He didn't wait for Hisoka to finish that thought. Cake forgotten, he dashed for the door and into the hall, pushing through his colleagues to try and get to the front of the pack. It was all Hisoka could do to keep up.

Without any clear idea as to where the commotion was centered, they could only follow their peers from other departments until they came to the railing around the building's rotunda, where a crowd had already gathered.

In the center, at ground level, was one person Hisoka had never expected to see again, and another Tsuzuki had been afraid to see here, in the Land of the Dead.

* * *

It was as though the shame of the long walk before his peers had physically weakened him. When Zepar released Focalor at the base of the steps before the throne, he actually fell, with a groan, and had to labor to push himself back up to his hands and knees.

If it was an act, it would not save him. Demons did not feel pity, least of all for one of their own. Those who saw Focalor fall only laughed and jeered. Surely there were many among them who, like Zepar, had been looking forward to this day for a long while.

Zepar raised his eyes to the top of the dais, where his mistress, King Ashtaroth, sat on her lion throne with head held high beneath her crown of horns. Beside her, Paimon unfolded his crossed legs to sit forward in his own. Zepar hoped it was not lost on the simian king at this moment how many other thrones stretched out in a line to either side of them that, once occupied, now sat empty.

"Illustrious monarchs of Pandemonium," Zepar sang, as much for the audience of high and low demons alike who had gathered to see the spectacle as for his queen, "I give you Focalor, once Grand Duke of Hell, now undeniable traitor! I caught him in the very act of helping the mortal woman Sakuraiji Ukyou and her child, with the aid of the captive shinigami, to escape from our world."

There were gasps of surprise from the sides of the room. But drowning them out by far, boos and calls for Focalor's head.

Paimon raised a hand for silence, but the gesture was in vain. He had to speak up over the rabble to make himself heard. "Were there any witnesses who could confirm these accusations?"

" _I_ witnessed his crime myself, Your Grace," said Zepar, though he knew that was not what Paimon meant. "But if you're concerned about the charge's veracity, you could simply ask the accused. He wouldn't dare deny it before the court."

"And is it true?"

Silence did descend then over the room when Ashtaroth spoke. So suddenly Zepar could hear the fabric of one onlooker's robe brushing against his neighbor's. He tried not to let his satisfaction at that show too obviously; but, to him, it was proof if there ever was any that the mob was no longer with Paimon.

"Grand Duke Focalor," she continued, "you stand accused of the unpardonable offense of aiding your king's sworn enemy, the death-judge Enma, and of the theft of your lord and master's rightful property. Do you deny it?"

While she spoke, Focalor struggled to right himself in a kneeling position; and with her last words, his and Ashtaroth's eyes met. If Zepar had been paying attention to them, rather than the crowd, he might have wondered at the understanding that passed between them without need of words, and might have shivered at the confidence in Focalor's own smile when smiling ought to have been the last thing the disgraced duke felt like doing. "I do not deny helping the shinigami and mortal woman escape," he protested, to the very vocal displeasure of the audience. "But if I am guilty of anything, it is of being too loyal a servant."

Cries of disgust erupted on every side of him. Zepar took a fistful of Focalor's hair, which had come loose from its ponytail during transport, and yanked his head back hard. "Your Majesty, please. Allow me at last to take my revenge. Allow me to end this affront, this _worm,_ once and for all, as Commander Tsuzuki rightly should have ended him in his shame in Nagasaki. Allow me to mete out this justice in your name!"

This was his moment, his glory. His chance to wipe away any trace of his ugly, naked, defeated self from the collective memory of Pandemonium. He would prove himself an avenging angel—well, an avenging _fallen_ angel, in any event, victorious over the forces of good and bolstered by the cheers of the crowd.

The last thing Zepar expected at this moment was for Focalor to laugh at the thought of his impending demise. But, then again, he could have easily gone mad since his failed coup at Saint Michel. In fact, it would explain a lot if he had.

"Laugh all you want," Zepar hissed in his ear while the crowd chanted for Focalor's execution. "I will end you right here, so help me, whether my queen gives her consent or not."

"And I will see you fall," Focalor murmured back. "When she's had enough of you, I'll be there. And I'll still be laughing while you writhe in shame and a thousand torments. I promise you that."

Mad, definitely. There was no other explanation. Because _if_ such an unimaginable thing as Zepar falling from Ashtaroth's good graces ever happened, Focalor certainly would not be around to see it.

With a bored twitch of her hand, Ashtaroth gave her consent.

And with every bit of his power, every bit of his hatred toward his colleague and rage at the wrongs that had been done to him, Zepar slammed Focalor's head into the stone steps. It was not difficult to pulverize the skull of a walking corpse, as it turned out. But Zepar slammed it down again and again, until that accursed eel's laughter was no more than the echo of distant waves in his head.

* * *

Science fiction made teleportation look easy. But Ukyou was now convinced it was something human bodies were _not_ meant to endure. At least, not live ones.

Once had been more than enough. Like riding a carnival ride after a full meal, with an operator who didn't know when to stop. Surely being upwards of six-months pregnant wasn't helping. But no sooner had they landed in one world than Keijou was hoisting her to her feet again and dragging her through the fabric of space like a hot metal wire through the eye of a needle.

When they stopped again, he didn't seem to mind that she collapsed. The modern polished stone floor felt blessedly cool and solid beneath her knees and the heels of her hands, and she could breathe again while her surroundings slowly ceased their spinning. She wanted to lie down against the floor, and press her face to it, until she started to feel alive again.

But the blaring of klaxons around them and sound of footsteps rushing closer would not let her do so.

She glanced up at Keijou, and saw him tense, his expression serious, his stance indicating he was preparing for trouble.

Figures in traditional Japanese armor charged into the rotunda, pikes pointed at Ukyou and Keijou. For a moment she thought they were historical re-enactors, but their tiger heads, baring canines like steak knives, were not masks at all, but attached and real. Ukyou wanted to scream in frustration. After all that, had they only succeeded in landing themselves back in Hell?

"Wait! Stand down!" a human woman with short dark hair and a long great coat identical to Keijou's shouted at the tiger-headed men. "This man is a Peacekeeper. He's one of us. We can take things from here."

"This man has the stench of Hell on him!" one of the tiger men protested.

And while the two parties argued it out, the woman's companion rushed forward, falling to her knees beside Ukyou. Her long hair was pulled back in a large bow that would have looked more appropriate on a younger girl, but there was kindness in her heavy-lidded eyes that Ukyou instinctively knew she could trust. "Ms. Sakuraiji, I take it?" the young woman said breathlessly. "Are you alright? How do you feel?"

Ukyou must have asked where she was, because the dark-haired woman said over her shoulder: "The Land of the Dead. The Ministry of Enma."

Keijou let out a groan of relief. "Finally! We made it!"

But Ukyou didn't like the way the woman helping her was looking at him. Ukyou knew that look well. Like she had never expected to see Keijou again.

She didn't get to ask the question that had been on the tip of her tongue, however, as all around the rotunda, more people began to crowd together, drawn by the noise. Ukyou could see them whispering to one another, and knew it was about her. Could they tell just by looking at her that she didn't belong here? That she wasn't dead? (At least, Ukyou hoped she was still alive!)

Or was it her belly they were muttering about? Was she showing that much? Self-conscious, she tried to make herself smaller behind the woman with the bow in her hair, feeling the beginnings of a panic attack coming on.

A shudder ran through Ukyou and into Nonomiya, and the shinigami's heart broke for the mortal woman. This wasn't right. It wasn't a fair burden to place on anyone, let alone someone who had already been traumatized by her experiences in Hell. "It's okay," Nonomiya tried, though the words felt hollow on her lips. "You're safe now—"

"Am I still alive?"

"Yes," Nonomiya told her, though she realized only after she said it that she could not be entirely sure of even that. But Ukyou certainly didn't feel like one of the deceased. "You don't have to be afraid anymore. You're in good hands now. No one here will allow any harm to come to you."

"And so, the prodigal returns! And with a mortal in tow? To what do we owe this pleasure?"

Whatever positive vibes Nonomiya had been trying to project for Sakuraiji's sake wavered when she heard that voice enter the room. Chief Todoroki. She should have looked to him as a superior, he should have commanded her respect and obedience, yet somewhere along the line, she realized now, she had come to genuinely resent him and feel that his presence could bring nothing good. Could it have been Konoe's influence? The result of working under the command of a benevolent chief?

"Your man carries the taint of brimstone," one of the tiger guards warned, but Todoroki waved off his concern as he stepped within the reach of their weapons. "You spend long enough breathing the fumes they call an atmosphere in Hell, of course you'll start to smell like it."

About the same time, Keijou informed his chief, loud enough for everyone to hear: "The mortal is Dr. Sakuraiji Ukyou, and it was her home Tsuzuki was tracked to two months ago. She's been kept a prisoner of Astaroth in Hell ever since, and I have reason to believe they will want her back. I brought her here hoping Enma would grant her asylum."

"She doesn't belong here. If we gave sanctuary to every living person who was foolish enough to make a pact—"

"She's carrying Muraki Kazutaka's child."

That news caused some whispering among the gathered crowd. Apparently most of Juuohcho knew of Muraki, and those who didn't were soon to find out. But Nonomiya was most concerned for Sakuraiji, who seemed to shrink behind the shield of Nonomiya's body and looked like she wished she were dead. Or, at very least, invisible.

Nonomiya wanted to knock Keijou in the jaw for sharing that bit of information with everyone who happened to be in earshot. Glancing over at Kazuma, she knew her partner was feeling the same way, and showing much less restraint. Had Keijou no compassion? Didn't he understand that that wasn't the kind of info he had the right to reveal before all of Enma-cho?

Meanwhile, Todoroki was staring at Ukyou with new eyes. As though someone had laid out a selection of diamonds before him, she thought, and told him they were all his to do with as he pleased. And, for reasons she hardly understood herself, she was deathly afraid of him for it. It was not unlike the way those men in the park in her university days had looked at her. Perhaps even worse, because it wasn't sex he wanted, or to exert his power over her, to degrade her. Ukyou knew in that instant that Todoroki had eyes only for what she carried, and it filled her with a terror the likes of which she had only felt before in Hell. _I'm still not really out of it, am I?_

"I'll make sure asylum is granted," Todoroki said. "In the meantime, I would like to have Ms. Sakuraiji examined. To . . . ensure that her health has not been compromised by her stay in Hell. And the child's, too, of course."

As he was speaking, a figure in a white lab coat was trying desperately to break through the crowd. And when he managed to do so, he rushed to Ukyou's and Nonomiya's sides.

"I'd like to offer my services in performing the examination," Watari said with a raised hand while he caught his breath. "I have the facilities all ready to receive patients. And, need I remind you, Dr. Sakuraiji wouldn't be the first living person—"

"Thank you, Mr. Watari, but this is a Peacekeeping matter. We will handle everything—including Sakuraiji's care."

But Ukyou wouldn't have it. The more she saw and heard of Todoroki, the more decided she was that she would _not_ surrender herself to his custody. She would rather go back to Hell and wait to be delivered of this nightmare there than put herself in the care of that man. Though she hardly knew enough about him to say why.

"I want Mr. Watari to do it!" she said, before she could change her mind.

Watari blinked, startled that she had stood up for him when he was a perfect stranger to her. But by Nonomiya's smile, passed between the two of them like a secret, Ukyou knew she had made the right decision.

"But he's an engineer," Todoroki protested, "not a physician—"

"I don't care. I want him to be the one to examine me," Ukyou insisted, with all the finality she could muster, "or no one at all."

Todoroki's gaze hardened, and Ukyou felt for certain that he was going to fight her on this till the very last. But, to her surprise, he acquiesced—though it seemed to pain him to do so: "If that is your wish. Watari, I leave Ms. Sakuraiji in your . . ." On the cusp of saying "capable," he stopped himself short. "Your hands. As for the matter of Agent Keijou—"

"He shall submit to quarantine," said one of Enma's guards, "until such time as his cleanliness can be ascertained."

"He will do no such thing," said Todoroki. "His cleanliness would only be a concern if there were a possibility Mr. Keijou's soul was corrupted by infernal forces."

"He spent two months in Hell, subjected during that time to what tortures we do not yet know. Therefore the possibility—"

"Is nil. Mr. Keijou is one of my most trusted officers, soldier, and no Peacekeeper of mine would allow himself to be corrupted, no matter what those devils might do to try and persuade him otherwise. The very idea is an affront to Mr. Keijou's decade of loyal service to King Enma." And Todoroki looked to Keijou for affirmation that he had not pegged his officer wrong.

Nevertheless, the tiger-headed demons insisted that those were the protocols that demanded to be followed.

They just weren't as insistent as Todoroki. "I will examine Mr. Keijou for any evidence of corruption myself, then. And King Enma can rest assured that I will be most thorough in doing so, as I stake my department's reputation on the moral fortitude of my officers. If His Augustness has a problem with my findings, or my methods, he can take it up with me personally. At which time, should he still desire that Mr. Keijou be locked away, I will happily comply with his wishes."

* * *

Shit, Hisoka thought when he saw Keijou. What's that guy doing here?

He'd been told he had killed Keijou when he ordered Rikugou's attack. At least, Hisoka had been bearing the blame for it all this while from Todoroki and his department. Unless Keijou's survival came as a surprise to Peacekeeping, too—and if it did, they were careful to give no indication. But they couldn't have known he was being holed up in Hell the last few months, could they?

What really didn't sit well with Hisoka, though, was how quickly Keijou zeroed in on Tsuzuki out of the whole crowd—not Hisoka, not the person actually responsible for what he had gone through, but Tsuzuki. Even across the room, even over all the other thoughts screaming out of people's skulls, Hisoka felt the strength of Keijou's rancor like it was being beamed straight into his gut. He didn't know how else to put it than that Keijou's hatred felt strong enough for two souls; and it didn't seem like too much of a stretch to say his eyes practically glowed with the heat of it.

Hisoka turned to Tsuzuki and was about to share his concerns, but Tsuzuki's attention was elsewhere. He didn't notice Keijou glaring daggers up at him because he was focused solely on Ukyou.

Maybe Tsuzuki had let his guard slip in his surprise at seeing her, or else the new level of connection between him and Hisoka was still fresh and strong. Either way, Hisoka could feel Tsuzuki's guilt swelling in his soul as though it were his own. The sense of _I did this to her, it's all my fault she's in this mess._

And more—more he wished he didn't feel. Tsuzuki's affection. The kind of warmth a person doesn't feel for someone they view as just a pawn in their schemes. Hisoka's own jealousy. . . . Ukyou was going to be a problem. Not that it was her fault, but Hisoka could feel her presence here dragging Tsuzuki back into the same old quagmire of emotion. That she was carrying Muraki's child just made it all worse. Was it wrong of Hisoka that he wanted to protect Tsuzuki from having to face that by any means necessary?

But after Tsuzuki's confession just yesterday to planning to do Ukyou harm, exactly which of them needed protection from the other? Hisoka wanted to think that Tsuzuki had enough humanity in him he would never dream of hurting an unborn child, but how certain could he be? Where Muraki and his legacy were concerned, could he put anything past Tsuzuki?

But the Ukyou problem was, for the moment, out of Hisoka's hands, as she let Watari lead her back to his office and away from all their prying eyes. It would be Hisoka's job to keep a close watch on Tsuzuki.

He should have known. Just when he thought they were making progress, moving beyond the past, it reappeared to prove to him the past never went away. He couldn't just pretend everything they'd been through and all that they'd done no longer existed. And they would never be free of Muraki. That man didn't even have to be present to fuck everything up.

* * *

When next Zepar saw Paimon, he looked paler than usual, as if he'd eaten something that didn't agree with him.

"What seems to be the matter, my king?" said Zepar, his triumph over Focalor making him cocky, but he no longer cared to show deference to this doomed regent. "I don't suppose you've asked me here so you may apologize for the way you spoke to me before? To grovel for my intercession with Ashtaroth? Though I doubt she would spare your life now, no matter what I have to say."

Paimon laughed at that. "You really are a simpleton. Or is it just that you can't be bothered to look beyond the end of your own cock? I can't quite decide which."

The smirk died on Zepar's lips. "What are you talking about?"

"You have no idea, do you? How thoroughly you've been used—how you _will_ be used, if you allow her to have her way?"

Paimon shook his head sadly, though Zepar doubted he actually had the other's pity. "You think you've done her a great favor," said the monkey-king, "don't you, punishing the traitor whom she had falsely trusted, winning her gratitude for yourself. But she and Focalor used you, and you're too full of your own delusions of importance to see how well you played right into their hands."

Zepar seized Paimon by the jacket, never mind that it might be construed as threatening a monarch. He was beyond such cares now.

"Tell me!" he demanded, shaking the king. "What has the traitor done!"

"It isn't Focalor you should be worried about," Paimon said. "He's just a soldier. But your queen has done something very stupid. She arranged the mortal woman's escape herself. In fact, she ordered Focalor to do it—even encouraged rumors about a threat to Sakuraiji's life. My supporters have already been blamed for it, though she and I both know they are innocent of the charges. No such threat ever existed. She orchestrated it all, all so she could smuggle the doctor into Meifu. And get a man on the inside."

Zepar bared his teeth at that bit of news. _That rotten little eel. . . ._ "Are you telling me Focalor's still alive? That my revenge—"

"Was all for show. And what a good show it was. You gave the masses what they crave. Blood, brains, the utter humiliation of someone who once ordered them around. . . ." Seeing the outrage on Zepar's features, Paimon's grin fell. But his sympathy was disingenuous. "You really didn't know? That he had already jumped ship? My, that is careless of you. Surely the decaying state of his vessel had left him in a diminished position, but it was clear to anyone who knew him the Focalor whose head you smashed in was not, shall we say, all there."

And Ashtaroth knew. How could she not have? She dangled his revenge before him, knowing it was what Zepar craved most, when all the while she must have been laughing at his ignorance. "I don't get it," Zepar said, trying not to think of how many other times he might have been used without his knowledge. "How would Sakuraiji being in Enma's jurisdiction help Ashtaroth? She can't touch her there."

"You wouldn't get it," Paimon snorted. "It's just sophisticated enough a plan to almost work. It's the child it all hinges on. Oh, don't look at me like that. It was the worst-kept secret in Pandemonium that the doctor was carrying Tsuzuki's child. And Ashtaroth has a claim on it. A legal, binding claim that even Enma won't be able to dispute. But he will, because he's as bound to his own laws as any mortal in the Upper World, and Ashtaroth will use his refusal as an excuse to rally her armies and invade."

"She will take back the Lands of the Dead for Hell, where the seat of Judgment rightly belongs," Zepar said, though even he felt like little more than a puppet speaking someone else's words. Words he had no choice but to believe. Because if they were not true, what had he devoted himself to? "And I will be there by her side for every charge, until we stand victorious against the forces of Yomi."

"She will fail. And she'll drag you and half the inhabitants of this place down with her. Those who are reckless or stupid enough to follow her on this damn-fool quest. But I come to offer you an alternative."

"Which is?"

"Join me instead."

He made it sound so simple. Just two little words. Blasphemy wasn't supposed to be so succinct. Zepar swallowed, finding his throat suddenly dry. He wanted to laugh it off as a joke, but Paimon's hard stare told of his seriousness. "You want me to betray my queen. My _King_."

"No," said Paimon, unblinking. "Merely . . . look the other way. When she gives the order to invade, stay home. Claim a tummy ache."

"And when she comes back to Hell, she'll murder me for desertion." After subjecting him to every torture in the book, of course. Probably publicly.

" _If_ she comes back. It's your choice, Zepar. Will you be a stooge for a bloodthirsty queen whose power peaked three thousand years ago, and possibly be destroyed in the process? Or enjoy the privileges afforded by a higher rank in the court of a new Supreme Ruler of Hell?"

"Why tell me this?" Strange how it seemed like Zepar who was caught in Paimon's white-knuckled grasp, rather than the other way around. "You have to know I could just turn around and tell Ashtaroth what you've told me. You're not afraid that she'll put _you_ on trial for conspiracy against her?"

"When she has already been actively conspiring to have me usurped and destroyed?" Paimon shrugged. "No, I'm not worried. I know that no matter what you do with that information, it won't change anything for me. It won't change her mind about Enma, either. She's set on this doomed plan. But you can still save yourself."

 _Salvation. . . ._ That was rich, coming from a demon. Expecting another demon would respond favorably to the word. Zepar snorted, trying to turn away.

But Paimon would not be brushed off so easily. "You'd be wise to consider my advice, Zepar. Loyalty is not a trait that suits you. Nor, for that matter, does it suit Ashtaroth. She is loyal to only one being, and that is herself."

 _Tell me something I don't know._ But where Paimon erred was in thinking Zepar had a problem with that. "And what would you know about what suits me?"

"You and I are cut from the same cloth." Seeing that he had Zepar's attention now, Paimon stepped closer. "We're tricksters _. We_ were never meant to bend our knees, or plot apocalypses and world domination. We thrive on disorder, anarchy. Besides, the world already belongs to us. The material world. And all her pleasures.

"That is," he muttered with a flash of teeth, the wicked canines of a baboon, "it _would_ all be ours, if we were allowed to be ourselves. If we were allowed to interfere freely in the Living World like we did in the old days, instead of kowtowing to lazy fools that would keep us chained here, poking and prodding the souls of the already dead, doing the work that is rightly the domain of the death gods. If Ashtaroth has her way we will be as dogs tied to a tree, thrown naught but bones to gnaw on for all eternity when he could have fresh meat. When we could be wolves!"

"You would have us return to the Dark Ages," Zepar said with a grin. Far from a term to be reviled, in Hell those times when demons and devils roamed openly among the living, with far fewer regulations to restrict their dealings, were seen as a sort of Golden Age.

By some. The modern world, with its loose mores and skepticism toward the supernatural, had been kind to Zepar. He and his legions found no shortage of legitimate work under the rules as they stood. And somehow knowing his victims didn't believe in his kind only made tormenting them the sweeter. He didn't see that he had anything significant to gain from changing the system.

Still, there was something seductive in Paimon's proposal that Zepar could not deny. Though he was loth to let Paimon know that.

"Of course, it's just something to think about," the king said. "I'm not asking for your allegiance. I know it would be hypocritical of me to do so. Just ask yourself whose side you're really on before the moment comes to act. Hers, or your own?"


	28. Family way

"Thank you for agreeing to do this," Watari said as he readied his equipment. "But, if you don't mind my asking, why did you insist on me? You don't know me from Adam."

"It was your lab coat, actually."

Watari chuckled. "Is that so?" It seemed he couldn't be sure whether to take Ukyou at her word, or thought she was making a joke.

Ukyou _was_ serious, though maybe there was a little more to it than that. This Watari fellow was someone genuine, someone who could be trusted to say what he meant and mean what he said, but also not rush to judgments or react from a place of emotional bias. Ukyou had met the type plenty of times before in her career. Enough that she felt confident she could discern when it was an act from when it wasn't. On top of that, the young man had a warm personality, and a curious mind she could relate to. Surely the "Dr." title didn't hurt.

"Call it a professional bias," she told him, while she waited with hands folded in her lap on the edge of an infirmary bed. "We scientists have to stick up for one another."

Ukyou thought she caught a bit of a blush spread across Watari's face. "Yes, well, they weren't lying earlier. I really am an engineer by training. Any medical knowledge I have is self-taught, and ofttimes born of necessity. You've probably guessed as much by now, but we don't see a lot of living in here. When we do, _someone_ has to make sure they don't die from mishandling before their time."

"It's a passion, then, is what you're saying." At least, it was reassuring to think of it that way. Passion could drive a person to proficiency, if he was dedicated. "Besides, when you think about it, living things are just a type of organic machine."

"That's exactly what I've always said! You know, I've been reading your research." His job momentarily forgotten, Watari dropped down in a swivel chair, leaning forward to speak to Ukyou as if they were conspirators sworn to secrecy. "We had to raid your office as part of one of our investigations—er, that's a long story best saved for another time. But what most impressed me was your work on plants, believe it or not. The way you tweaked their genes so they wouldn't be triggered into bloom or dormancy by seasonal stimuli."

"It was inspired by the idea that sexual maturity and mortality are related. Philosophically, aesthetically, the two have been intertwined for millennia. But biologically as well, growth hormone production drops off and the chance for mistakes to be made in the copying of DNA increases dramatically once an organism reaches reproductive maturity. If you can find a way to trick the cells of adults into thinking they haven't reached that stage yet, you could potentially stop the aging process in its tracks. At least, that's the theory."

"And I bet plants had an advantage because they keep growing throughout their lifetimes."

"In the initial stages of my research, yes. There are also fewer ethical concerns with experimenting on plants. I always knew I wanted to apply my work to animals, and eventually people, but had to make sure I was on the right track first."

They bantered back and forth along similar lines while Watari performed various basic tests and checks. He wasn't equipped with any prenatal screening devices and was rather out of his league in that department anyway, but Ukyou could have assured him that the child was alive and strong.

She didn't want to think about it at all right then. She couldn't remember the last time she had had a chance to exercise her brain with another human being with similar intellectual interests. For a while she was able to pretend she was speaking to a colleague while on a business trip, and that her life hadn't been completely upended in the last six months.

It was good that Watari's easy manner relaxed her so, because eventually the conversation was bound to turn to matters more personal. "You were close to Muraki?"

Ukyou let out a deep breath. The needle slipping into her arm pinched, but it wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as hearing that question, or knowing she had to answer it.

"We attended university together. Pre-med. We parted ways professionally, though—he to private practice, I to pharmaceuticals. I didn't think I had the fortitude to deal directly with the suffering of patients the way he could. But if I could help provide the medicine that saved their lives, or alleviated their pain even just a little bit—well, then at least I would have done the world some good. Kazutaka and I stayed in touch, however. We collaborated on a few projects, mostly through correspondence. And . . ."

She bit her lip. It was always difficult to decide whether to tell someone the next bit, but ultimately she concluded it could be relevant. "We were engaged. To be married. Still are, in fact. Technically."

Watari blinked. "No kidding."

"I have a pretty good idea of what you must think of me. The fact that I would still consider myself his fiancée, even knowing the things he's done . . . I'm sure I must seem like some sort of fallen woman. How could you not think I'm guilty by association?"

"It's not my place to judge," Watari said in a tone that left no room for argument. "That's Enma's job. I'll be honest, I never liked Muraki. Tortured and killed too many people I care about for me to ever warm up to him. But I don't know what good it would serve to hold his crimes against you. Seems pretty dumb when you didn't commit them, wouldn't you say?"

Ukyou couldn't very well argue with that. Even if she was certain he was just saying so to keep the mood cordial between them. "I'm no saint, Dr. Watari."

"You're no sinner, neither. At least, not for the way you feel. Loving someone doesn't make you any less than what you already were."

 _Even if the person I love is a monster?_

Ukyou had to look away while her blood filled the vial. For all the blood she had drawn over her career, it still made her uncomfortable to watch her own leave her body in that precise, controlled manner. Now more than ever, it seemed. And the reason why was not a mystery to her.

She must have tensed noticeably, because Watari urged her, "Hey, just relax. You'll have less soreness afterwards if you do."

"It isn't that." It was all going to come out eventually. As soon as her blood had filled that vial, her chance to make any sort of defense would be taken away with it. "Dr. Watari, you remember when I said that I trusted you because you were a scientist?"

"Yes? Oh! Of course. Nothing you say has to leave this room if you don't want it to."

Ukyou chewed her lower lip. Part of her was still determined to keep the truth inside, at any cost. But the more rational part knew that she had to say it now. Before it came out in some other way over which she had no control.

"It's not Kazutaka's child. It's Tsuzuki's."

She wasn't sure what kind of reaction she had been expecting. Anything would have been more helpful than Watari's speechless staring, though.

"I didn't want to say anything when Keijou blurted it out in front of everyone," Ukyou went on. "That was the conclusion he jumped to when we were in Hell together and I couldn't bring myself to correct him. The way he spoke of Tsuzuki—it was obvious he hates Tsuzuki so much, maybe even more than Kazutaka, and I was afraid he might try to hurt me or the child in some way if he knew the truth. So when he told everyone it was Kazu's, I guess I thought it would be for the best if that's what everyone thought it was.

"But when you test my blood, you're going to find out anyway. If you have my research, then you have Tsuzuki's genome on file. Isolate the fetus's DNA from mine and compare it to his, and it will show a paternal match."

"That's not possible."

"I'm sorry, Doctor, but there's just no one else who could be the father. It's been years since—" But now she was getting into details of her personal life that Watari didn't actually need to know. "Just trust me when I say," Ukyou said with emphasis, "there's no one else it could be."

Watari shook his head. He laughed to himself as he withdrew the needle and pressed a cotton ball over Ukyou's arm. "I believe you, I really do. Still, I'm telling you, it _can't_ be possible. Tsuzuki's dead, the same as me and y—well, the same as me, anyway. These bodies we shinigami have are just copies of our original selves. Our gametes shouldn't be viable. Our gametes _aren't_ viable!" he corrected himself.

How was Ukyou supposed to argue with that? She didn't know the first thing about how shinigami biology worked. Until a few months ago, she didn't believe in them at all. "Test my blood—"

"Oh, I will."

"It will confirm everything I'm saying to you. I wouldn't know how to begin to explain it, Dr. Watari, but I don't have any reason to lie to you either. What would I have to gain by claiming I'm carrying the child of a dead man?"

"What indeed? But then, what would be the advantages to being seen to be carrying the child of a man as despised as Muraki?" Watari must have noticed how his musings were doing the opposite of putting his patient at ease, and amended, "I think it might be safest in the meantime to keep up the ruse Keijou started. I'll have to share my findings with my chief, whether they confirm your story or not—"

"Todoroki?" Ukyou remembered the man with the military bearing and flat top in the rotunda. Moreover, she remembered the look he had given her. The thought of that man learning the truth about her and Tsuzuki gave her chills.

Apparently she wasn't the only one. "God, no!" said Watari. "Chief Konoe, of the Summons Division. Tsuzuki's division. You'll like Konoe. He's kinda like the dad you wish you had growing up. Drives you hard, forgets half your birthdays, but is always there when you need someone you can trust. Someone who can keep a secret, like the identity of your baby-daddy, a secret."

Ukyou supposed she would just have to trust that was true, since she knew nothing about this Konoe. "What will he do to Tsuzuki when he finds out?" She hugged her middle, as though to protect the child from any judgment.

"I have no idea. Probably give Tsuzuki the sternest talking-to of his afterlife. But he's a good man. He'll make sure you're protected and well looked-after while you're in Enma-cho. Both of you," Watari added with a nod toward her belly. "In the meantime, you should stay here and get some rest. After the ordeal you had, you need time to recover. I'm gonna make a quick cafeteria run, get you some real food, but I promise I'll come right back."

"You're going to leave me here alone?"

"Not entirely alone!" Watari was quick to say, urging Ukyou to calm when she looked like she wanted to get up and flee. "I can ask my birds to look in on you if you want the company. But you don't have to worry about anyone coming to take you away. No one is going to disturb you here. They wouldn't dare. Because then they'd have to suffer my wrath, and it always strikes when they're least expecting it."

Ukyou had no idea what he was talking about, but by the mad-scientist grin on Watari's face, she could believe that his colleagues might have reason to find him terrifying.

* * *

It was wonderful to take a shower again. Such a routine, mundane thing, just hot water and soap, but it felt to Keijou as though he had finally been cleansed of the filth and iniquity of Hell.

Todoroki had already deemed him spiritually clean enough to return to his duties in the morning. In the privacy of his office, Keijou had stripped down to the skivvies, but Todoroki had been unable to detect any marks or other indications of demonic possession or tampering on his person.

"You say they tortured and interrogated you while you were in captivity?"

"You'll be pleased to know I gave them nothing, sir. No matter what they did to me."

Besides, Keijou was sure he would know if he were possessed. There would be voices in his head, or shadowy things glimpsed out of the corner of his vision that weren't really there. So far he had experienced nothing of the sort.

If he was expecting Todoroki to be proud of him for his fortitude, however, he was looking in the wrong place. "I wouldn't expect anything less," his chief said. "My department has no use for shinigami who cave when things get a little uncomfortable." It didn't seem to be Keijou's ordeal he was concerned about anyway. "The timing of your return couldn't be better. Now that Tsuzuki is back with us, I need my best officers around me more than ever."

"About that, sir," said Keijou as he buttoned up his shirt. "I noticed him among the crowd in the rotunda and assumed that meant King Enma cleared him to resume casework."

Todoroki's grumble gave away how he felt about that. "He's wearing a tracking spell as part of his probation, but I've made my concerns known to His Majesty. That man is not fit to mingle among the living. Once a menace, always a menace."

"I wholeheartedly agree, Chief. That's why I want to ask your permission to take up Agrippina's vendetta myself."

The strength of his conviction must have shown on his face. Todoroki seemed surprised. And thrilled. "Sister Agrippina was prepared to wait decades if that was how long it took to see it through."

"I know. But the man responsible for killing her twice over doesn't deserve to get away with his sins with just a slap on the wrist. I would wait a century to see justice done her memory. She served this department and her king loyally. And she was my partner. I was supposed to have her back. I owe it to her to do everything in my power to put Tsuzuki away where he can never hurt another soul again."

Being back in a Juuohcho without Agrippina's presence, knowing he would never see her again, only made Keijou more determined to keep that vow. It felt wrong somehow, this place without her, and it probably always would. There was nothing he could do to fix that.

Be that as it may . . .

Securing a towel around his waist, he stepped in front of the mirror, and was shaken by what he saw.

Behind the foggy surface, the details of Keijou's face and form were mere suggestions. But superimposed over his eye sockets were two faintly glowing rings, like the haloes around headlamps at night. When he moved side-to-side to see if they disappeared, they followed, always positioned firmly over his eyes.

 _Must be an optical illusion. Just a refraction in the moisture on the glass, or something._ But if that was all it was, why did it feel like something was watching him through his own reflection—

Keijou shot out his hand and wiped the fog from the mirror. To his relief, the weird effect disappeared as soon as he did so, and the only eyes left staring back at him were his own.

He chuckled at himself. _Spent too much time in that Hell hole. You're getting paranoid._

It didn't occur to Keijou to wonder why that thought should make him feel so victorious, as if at an impossible mission accomplished. As far as he was concerned, his mission was just starting.

Tsuzuki fucking Asato.

Just seeing that man again had been enough to send his blood pressure sky-rocketting. And to find him here, looking for all the world like he had never left, while in the meantime Keijou had been getting himself molested by rotting devils. Keijou hadn't thought it possible to despise Tsuzuki more than he already did, but now he understood his hatred of that man knew no limits.

Maybe it was too late for Agrippina to see vengeance done herself, but Keijou vowed, if it was the last thing he did in this existence, _he_ would avenge the injustices his partner had had to suffer on account of that man. Now it mattered more than ever. Because against all odds he had been given a second chance, and he did not intend to waste it.

* * *

"Are you certain?"

Watari had expected a strong reaction from Konoe when he broke the news, and sure enough, his chief looked as though he had just been punched in the gut. "I checked and rechecked my work," Watari assured him. "Believe me, I wish I could tell you it wasn't true."

"But how is it even possible? Shinigami are supposed to be sterile."

"That's what I thought too. But the data don't lie. Dr. Sakuraiji's child is related to Tsuzuki. Closely enough that I'm comfortable concluding he is indeed the father. I don't know how to explain it—at least, not without submitting Tsuzuki to some very invasive tests—but there it is."

"I can think of one perfectly reasonable explanation," Tatsumi said. "We know the Sakuraiji pharmaceutical company has been working with Tsuzuki's cloned cells since at least as far back as when Muraki Yukitaka was alive. And he was able to keep the cell line alive for decades before that. It's feasible she could have impregnated herself. She certainly had the means to do it."

Watari blinked up at him, surprised that Tatsumi would suggest Ukyou was capable of doing such a thing, never mind his accusatory a tone. Of course, Tatsumi always became a little more defensive when it came to Tsuzuki's wrongdoings. He probably wasn't even aware he had that tendency.

But that didn't give him the right to blame Ukyou for this, when she had made it clear to Watari her pregnancy was not the least bit intentional. "Dr. Sakuraiji was adamant her child was conceived in the, er, traditional method. She didn't even know it'd happened until it was too late."

"She could have been lying—"

"What reason would she have to lie about that!" Watari rounded on him. "It's bad enough everyone thinks Muraki's the father. They already believe she's carrying a baby serial killer, something that ought to be ended before it even has a chance to take after dear ol' dad. But at least _he's_ a living mortal. You can imagine the outcry if folks find out just how _abnormal_ that kid really is. So what could she possibly have to gain by telling us it's Tsuzuki's, if that's not the truth?"

"You're right," said Konoe. "This new information places Ms. Sakuraiji in even more danger here than she was already in. If she's telling the truth, then what Tsuzuki did is highly illegal. The powers that be aren't going to stand by and let her be delivered of that baby."

Watari could understand the reasoning behind that, too, even if he didn't like it. An impossible child born of a shinigami was a complete unknown—there was no recorded precedent to tell them what kind of being to expect. Flashbacks of Kamakura were already crawling through his mind, and he wondered if Tatsumi was thinking the same thing. He hoped, for Ukyou's sake, that her child didn't come out looking anything like Kurosaki Rui's.

This, Watari thought, was why, aside from those they were sent to collect, shinigami weren't supposed to have relations of any sort with the living. Certain checks were supposed to be in place to ensure that even if they broke those rules—being weak human souls, after all, who were terrible at resisting temptations—nothing would come of the union. If Tsuzuki's body wasn't subject to those same checks, then there was something wrong with it. Something that would have to be corrected. Enma would not stand for a shinigami that wasn't all dead threatening the order of his kingdom. "And Dr. Sakuraiji will be the one who suffers for it," Watari said to his hands in his lap. "Hasn't that poor woman been through enough?"

"I'm afraid it's about to get even worse for her," Konoe sighed. "I hear Todoroki has submitted a request to take the doctor into his department's custody."

"We can't allow that to happen! Never mind he has no just cause whatsoever. She's not a security threat!"

"I agree. I've made it abundantly clear to my superiors that the infirmary is the best place for her at the moment, due to her condition. There is no other place in the Judgment Bureau as qualified to deal with the medical needs of a living person. But I fear that may not be enough. We can't keep her locked up in your office indefinitely, Watari. The fact remains, she doesn't belong in this world."

"Well, you can't send her back to Chijou either! As soon as she steps foot in that plane the demons'll smell her like chum in the water!"

"I think I may have a solution," Tatsumi said. "That is, if we can secure his cooperation."

After the way he had questioned Ukyou's integrity just moments ago, Watari was skeptical. But that didn't change that he still trusted Tatsumi's judgment over anyone's. And at this point, he was willing to give any idea a fair hearing.

* * *

They were given a new case, their first together since Kumamoto. She was a young artist whose disease should have killed her weeks ago, who managed to convince Tsuzuki to let her hold on until after the opening night of her first gallery installation. It was her dream, after all, to live long enough to see her work admired by the public.

It was a straightforward case. But she was also the type Tsuzuki would have fallen for when his and Hisoka's partnership was just starting out. Idealistic but not quite to the point of naïve, twentyish, frail but buxom, huge, sad dark eyes. . . .

In those days, Hisoka believed Tsuzuki's problem was that he fell in love too easily. Now he wondered if it wasn't in fact some other emotion he was picking up on, one that Tsuzuki knew no other way to express but with affection. _This is why shinigami must always work in pairs. So one of the two will be less likely to do something stupid, like sleep with the case or grant them immortality out of pity._

But now, Hisoka felt none of the emotions that once troubled him coming from Tsuzuki's direction. He thought the tracking spell that entwined them would make him feel Tsuzuki's projections more keenly. Instead, his partner was like a black hole, letting next to nothing escape. Tsuzuki felt sorry for their case, sure, he was sympathetic to her dream, but that was about it. She was just another dime-a-dozen doomed soul to him; and as much as Hisoka had been hoping Tsuzuki would treat their cases with more professional distance, the change was proving harder than Hisoka had expected to get used to.

As for Gushoushin the Younger . . . "See?" he yawned when they returned to their accommodations. "It's like riding a bike. You don't need me. If it's all the same to you two, I think I'll just stay home when you go and collect her soul tomorrow night."

"But you're required to be there," Hisoka started to say, but Tsuzuki spoke over him: "You sure, Gushoushin? There's going to be a small buffet at the gallery opening. Not to mention, free wine! You've never been one to pass up free wine."

Not that those two should have been drinking on the job to begin with, let alone when Tsuzuki and Hisoka were both under review.

Besides, if anyone should have been allowed to stay home from a dinner party, it was Hisoka. He'd barely been able to eat for days, and it wasn't just the particular stresses of having Tsuzuki back. He actually welcomed those. Like an irritating brace he hadn't known he depended on so much until it was off. No, this was more like his insides were gearing up for a revolt.

It wasn't painful, though. More like one of those random erections that would hit a person during middle-school math class, brought on by nothing and making it near impossible to focus on anything else. And it hit at the most inconvenient times: the slippery, slimy feeling like some caterpillar deep inside himself was twisting in its cocoon that was Hisoka. He could practically hear it screaming. Screaming to be let out.

 _I don't have to listen to you,_ Hisoka shouted back at it in his mind. _I will never summon you again. So shut. Up._ _Leave_ _me_ _alone_ _!_

Bold hands slipped around his waist from behind, arms possessively crossing his stomach. A second later, Tsuzuki's face was nuzzled in the crook of his neck, his body warm against Hisoka's back.

Hisoka melted under the gentle pressure, which broke up and soothed away the other presence inside like a hot compress. He would have liked to be able to stay that way forever, wrapped in the curious but comforting mental silence of Tsuzuki's embrace.

Until he remembered they were in the middle of the Summons Division office. _Then_ he started freaking out. "Ge-get off of me, lech!"

"Fine~ fine~ . . ."

At least if Tsuzuki was offended by his reaction, he didn't let it show, as he released Hisoka and leaned back against a neighboring desk. "But just so you know, I wouldn't have done it if there were people watching."

Sure enough, when Hisoka turned to face the Summons office, he found it empty of souls but for him and Tsuzuki. "It's lunchtime," his partner observed, "in case you haven't noticed."

Hisoka hadn't, in fact. "I'm not hungry."

"So _I've_ noticed. I'm not going to tell you how to treat your own body, Hisoka, but you know it's not helpful to let your energy run down when you're working an investigation. Anything I can help with?"

He wasn't going to come out and ask what was wrong directly. Hisoka appreciated that, as it let him hide the truth more easily. "Nothing in particular," he lied. "And I'm sorry. For calling you a lech. You startled me, is all. I thought all our coworkers were watching and I didn't want them to know . . ."

"That we'd taken things to the next level? As if they haven't already guessed?"

Hisoka smiled at his choice of words. Normally "next level" would have implied sex, or at least something much more intimate than a kiss. But as damaged as they both were, Hisoka supposed even a little kiss or an affirmation of love counted as a huge leap into the uncharted.

"It's still new for me," Hisoka confessed, finding it easier to do so to his and Tsuzuki's shoes. "Touching another person, that is, and allowing myself to actually feel. To feel safe enough to drop my guard."

Muraki had ruined that for him. Having everything that man felt forced upon him had left scars almost as deep as the physical rape. Surely Tsuzuki understood that. That it mattered to Hisoka to have the power of choice. "Believe it or not, I really do like it when you and I touch, Tsuzuki. Just . . . maybe I can be the one to initiate it next time? On my own terms?"

"That's fair enough," Tsuzuki said with patient smile.

"Also, maybe we can make the workplace off-limits? You're not sensitive to these things so you're probably not aware that that kind of energy leaves a psychic fingerprint."

That wiped the smile clean off. Hisoka doubted he could have gotten the same reaction if he'd told Tsuzuki they were being videotaped. As if afraid of leaving butt prints, psychic or otherwise, Tsuzuki nonchalantly slid off the desk on which he was leaning.

It was impossibly endearing. And maybe if Hisoka hadn't been in such a dark mood when Tsuzuki arrived, he would have allowed himself to laugh.

As it was, he found himself taking Tsuzuki hand in his, and holding it there between them. He craved that warmth, that silence, that he felt coming down from Tsuzuki's end. It didn't desire anything of Hisoka except for his presence. He let it chase any last trace of Yatonokami from his consciousness. What would he have done without this? If Tsuzuki had never come back? Who would have saved him from being alone with the monster in his soul?

"Hm?" Tsuzuki stiffened in his grip as something outside the window caught his attention. "Is that Ukyou?"

Hisoka turned and looked for himself. He saw Konoe walking with her, the two appearing to be out for an afternoon stroll through the cherry grove.

Unless, "Is she being moved?" From what little he and Tsuzuki had been told, Hisoka gathered she had spent the last few days since her arrival cooped up in the infirmary.

Tsuzuki made to rush to the door, but, sensing it coming ahead of time, Hisoka tightened his hold on Tsuzuki's wrist and stopped him.

"I have to talk to her, Hisoka!" his partner said. "They haven't even let me get close enough this whole time to see if she's okay! And it's all my fault she's . . ."

Even if he didn't finish that thought, his guilt hit Hisoka like a blow to the diaphragm. If they weren't allowing Tsuzuki close, it was almost certainly with good reason. But Hisoka's heart went out to him. It would have been cruel of him to ignore Tsuzuki's pain, when he felt it so keenly inside himself: the desperate need to apologize that threatened to come bursting out of him if he had to hold it inside much longer.

"I'll go with you," Hisoka said, and released his grip.

* * *

They caught up with Ukyou and Konoe on the bank of the little stream that ran through the grove, sitting and chatting on a blanket spread out on the grass. By all appearances, they could have been enjoying a picnic, or a hanami, if there had been any food or drink beside the thermos of tea Ukyou held in her grip.

Ukyou was even smiling. Tsuzuki knew because he watched it fall when she saw him approach.

"Would it be alright if I talked with her for a bit?" he asked the chief.

Who exchanged glances with Ukyou. "Why don't you ask Dr. Sakuraiji if it's alright with her? I can't give my approval if she doesn't want to talk to you, Tsuzuki."

It didn't escape Hisoka's notice how the two had to struggle to make eye contact. And even then, it was easier for Tsuzuki and Ukyou to focus on one another's hands, or the empty space beside the other's ear, than speak to each other's faces. "It's fine," Ukyou said. But her gaze flickered nervously to Hisoka, whom she didn't know.

"I'm not allowed to go anywhere these days without supervision," Tsuzuki began, but Konoe filled in for him, as he pushed himself to his feet with a grunt: "You two talk. Kurosaki and I will be waiting over there so you can have some privacy."

Or some semblance of it anyway, Tsuzuki thought. He didn't have much privacy from Hisoka at all these days.

But he settled down beside Ukyou. Trying to act casual, but feeling like a miserable failure at it. He had only really come over here for one reason: to apologize. And so far he was failing at that, too, because he had no idea where to start.

"Your chief is a very kind man," Ukyou said to fill the silence. "And Dr. Watari has been most generous in looking after me, even though I don't think he's ever had to wait on a pregnant woman before. You're lucky to have coworkers like them."

"I feel the same way," Tsuzuki agreed. "Sometimes I think they're too generous for a place like this." By which he meant, a place surrounded by so much death.

It assured him somewhat to see a small smile flitter across her lips, however briefly. "What's important is that they have your back when you need help. Right? And they've put me very much at ease since coming here, considering the circumstances. Even sitting here, under these trees, with Mr. Konoe has been surprisingly pleasant. You see, I don't care for cherry blossoms. They remind me of something terrible that happened when I was younger. I think I mentioned it to you before."

 _The men in the park, who tried to pull you away and assault you, and almost succeeded. Muraki coming to your rescue, like some avenging angel, and nearly killing one of them. . . ._ Tsuzuki nodded.

"But I'm trying to move past it now," Ukyou said, meeting Tsuzuki's eyes, as though she might draw encouragement from him. "I'm trying very hard to see the beauty in these flowers that everyone else does."

Everyone but me, Tsuzuki thought, but it didn't seem right to correct her at a time like this.

"After being in Hell, I suppose everything seems more beautiful. Hell was like the surface of Venus, always black clouds hanging in the sky. The only light came from lava and lightning, so you could never tell if it was day or night. Even though I tell myself I'm in the Land of the Dead, now I feel the warmth of the sun and for a while I can pretend I'm back in my world. And that gives me hope. That maybe . . . Maybe there's a way out of this yet." She glanced down at her belly. "When it's all over."

"Why didn't you try to get rid of it, when you found out what I was?" It wasn't a very polite question, but it had been the one weighing on Tsuzuki since he had last seen Ukyou, and first learned of her pregnancy. If he had been in her situation, he didn't think he'd want to carry the spawn of a demon. He wasn't sure he would have been born himself, if his own mother had known what he was while he was still in her womb.

"I tried," Ukyou said, "when the demons told me what their ruler—I think Ashtaroth was her name?—what she had planned for the baby after it was born. I thought it would be better if it never made it that far, rather than grow up in that awful place and become the kind of monster they wanted it to be. But it wouldn't let me."

She stared at her hands in her lap, remembering what she had done. "I healed," she told Tsuzuki, "almost as fast as you did when I cut you. The child healed us. It doesn't want to die—"

"It doesn't _want_ anything," Tsuzuki said, shocked at his own callousness. But it was true. Or at least felt better if he believed it to be. "It's not conscious."

"Its genetics, then," Ukyou shot back. " _Your_ genes saved it. And me. It's _changed_ me. Do you know what your colleague Dr. Watari said when he examined me? That I have the telomeres of a teenager." That meant nothing to Tsuzuki; but judging by the laugh Ukyou forced, it was a big deal to her. "Now, I try to take care of myself, when I'm not working too hard, but even so, that's ridiculous."

 _In other words, I made you an abomination, too, when I put that thing in you._

Tsuzuki had tried to keep up a strong, optimistic front for her, but at the last, he could prop it up no longer. What was left of his fragile smile fell, and tears burned unshed behind his eyes.

"I'm sorry." The words left him in barely more than a whisper. Anything louder, he feared, and he wouldn't be able to keep his composure. "I can't tell you how sorry I am. I ruined your life. If I hadn't gone looking for you, if you'd never met me, none of this would have happened to you."

"Kazutaka said I was your revenge. Was he telling the truth? Is that what you came to me to get?"

The words hit him like a rod laid across his back, even if she hadn't meant them as punishment. They were reminder enough of what monstrous sins Tsuzuki, in his anger, was capable of committing. He couldn't bear to look at her, let alone answer. He didn't think she needed him to say anything to know the truth.

"Just answer me this," she said. "They said I was in Hell because Kazutaka promised them a child of his blood. But I don't think beings like that would consider a cousin or an in-law a close enough relation. You weren't lying after all when you said you and Kazutaka were related, were you? Are you really h-his . . ."

She couldn't even bring herself to say the word.

Tsuzuki nodded. "He's my son."

Like ripping off a bandage, it lifted a bit of weight from him to say those words to another human being, even if it only left the wound beneath raw in the open air.

"Biologically," he added. That distinction seemed important, even if it didn't change the basic facts. "I died long before he was born, but his grandfather—I was his patient, for a time, and he kept some of my tissue after I . . . Well, you know that much already, I think, you worked with the stuff your whole career. The elder Muraki cloned it, experimented on it. He wanted to use my DNA to create some sort of superhuman—"

"Wait a minute." Ukyou shook her head, urging him to slow down. "Are you saying Kazutaka was just an experiment all along? Like one of the animals in my lab?"

Tsuzuki wouldn't have used the word "just." Though he couldn't bring himself to say "one success in a long line of failures" either, the way Muraki had impressed it upon him. "He never told you he wasn't conceived naturally?"

"It wasn't the sort of thing that ever came up, no," Ukyou said in a distant tone of voice. "But it makes sense now, looking back. My father must have known. He would make comments in passing about Kazu not looking anything like the other Muraki men, and about his poor mother. I think he blamed Yukitaka for driving her insane."

Tsuzuki said nothing while she related this to him. But his thoughts returned to the conversations he had had with Muraki over the last few months. Their stories matched up. And though Muraki still seemed to hold his mother responsible for so much of what he was, it seemed more and more to Tsuzuki like she had been the lone innocent in the whole mess.

"I never knew why Father would say those things," Ukyou said. "He never explained them to me, and I wonder now if he felt himself to be culpable of their crimes, too, just by professional association. He must have found out the truth shortly before he cut ties with them. Something they did must have finally crossed a line and he could no longer justify working with the Murakis. And he chose to take the secret with him to his grave, rather than share his shame with me."

"Yet he still experimented on my tissue. Until the day he died."

His accusatory tone caught Ukyou momentarily by surprise. "Yes," she began. "But only because he believed so strongly that what you had was unique—and that it could save lives! My father wasn't perfect, Tsuzuki, but he was a good man at heart."

Unlike Muraki Yukitaka, Tsuzuki thought with clenched fist, and his son. If he was going to blame anyone for Kazutaka's crimes, he should start with them. They made him. "It sort of makes you feel sorry for Muraki, doesn't it? He didn't ask to exist or to be what he was any more than that child," he nodded toward Ukyou's belly, "did."

Wrong thing to say. Out of the corner of Tsuzuki's eye, he saw Hisoka turn and hurry away from Konoe. They may have been standing a few trees away from Tsuzuki and Ukyou, but that didn't mean they weren't able to hear the gist of what was said.

And judging by Konoe's face, the news had come as a complete shock.

Though Hisoka's face was turned away from him, Tsuzuki could guess what he was thinking, what he was feeling. He could see it in the bow of Hisoka's head, in the fall of his shoulders, the slight trip in his steps that told of someone who was desperately trying _not_ to be seen running away.

"I'm sorry, I have to go," Tsuzuki said, getting to his feet. Mumbling something to Ukyou about his minder getting away from him that ultimately wasn't important.

 _Tatsumi, why did you have to be so good about doing what I asked? Why didn't you tell them while I was gone?_

 _So I wouldn't have to._

* * *

When he caught up to Hisoka, Tsuzuki barely touched his partner's shoulder and he spun around, knocking Tsuzuki's hand away.

"You forgot I was standing there, didn't you? That I could hear every word you said? Otherwise you wouldn't have said any of it—"

"Hisoka—"

" _When were you going to tell me?_ "

Tsuzuki could only blink, the words getting tripped up on his tongue. All he seemed to be able to focus on were the tears rolling down Hisoka's cheeks, and the anger in his eyes. This whole tangled web of cause and consequence had even caught Hisoka in its strands, and Tsuzuki didn't know where to start to try and unravel it.

"You weren't _ever_ going to tell me, were you?" said Hisoka. "After all that bullshit about not keeping secrets from each other, you didn't want me to find out!"

"I didn't want you holding my actions against Ukyou, after everything she's had to go through—"

"I'm not talking about that! You're both adults. I don't give a fuck what the two of you did, while you were alone, in her house, where you shouldn't have been. . . ." Clearly Hisoka did care about that, but it was beside the point: "I'm talking about you being Muraki's _father_!"

"Hisoka . . ." But he didn't know what else to say. Tsuzuki wanted to reach out to him, wanted to enfold Hisoka in his arms until those tears somehow went away. But he knew that moment was past now, maybe never to come again so long as the two of them existed. His touch would only make things worse now. His touch was what Hisoka feared. _Knowing I'm responsible for Muraki existing . . ._

 _It's like_ I'm _the one who raped him._ I'm _the one who killed him._

There was no excuse or apology that could possibly set that right. And that was precisely why he had been determined to keep it a secret. This was precisely the outcome Tsuzuki had feared most.

But that didn't excuse him from giving Hisoka the explanation he should have a year ago. "I swear, I only found out at the end of our last case. He had evidence—"

"I guess that explains why you couldn't kill him when he was right in front of you, practically unarmed. Why you wouldn't let _me_ do it for you."

So Hisoka's bitterness over the events of that night at the Sacred Heart school still hadn't abated. Hisoka must have known it wouldn't help now, though, and fought it down. Wiping one cheek with the back of his hand, he leaned back against the nearest tree for support. "I should have guessed what was really going on. It was like you completely changed after you talked with him that night."

"I should have told you then, I know. I know we'd said we were going to be open and honest with each other. But how could I tell you _that_? I knew you'd react this way and I didn't want to lose your trust. 'Cause how could you trust me after finding out I was the one responsible for all the shit you went through? If not for me, Muraki would never have been born, and he never would have done any of those deplorable things to you. You could have died an old man, surrounded by your family—"

"You're right," Hisoka cut him off, after something suddenly changed in him at Tsuzuki's words. "Maybe none of that would have happened, maybe I would have gone on with my life, and maybe I'd still be alive right now. But it wouldn't really be living."

Tsuzuki started. Was he missing something? This wasn't the way he'd envisioned this talk going. Hisoka was supposed to blame Tsuzuki for robbing him of the life he rightly deserved, until Tsuzuki felt properly chastened!

Instead, Hisoka said, "I hooked up with Tsubaki, you know. On the _Queen Camellia_ case."

 _Where is this coming from, all of a sudden?_ "I know," Tsuzuki heard himself say dumbly, trying to find the connection. "At least, I guessed as much."

"It seemed like every moment you weren't undercover, you were off with Muraki, _my murderer_ , playing detective, and it got to the point I couldn't stand it anymore. How easy the two of you were with each other, when you _knew_ what kind of man he was. So when Tsubaki suggested we fool around, I didn't think. I felt so alone—and angry, at _you_ —and I wanted to do something, anything, to make you jealous. I knew I wasn't the one she really wanted. She was just using me, and I her. But I went ahead with it anyway. I knew it was against the rules, but I told myself, since they never seemed to stop you . . ."

He paused, but Tsuzuki could find nothing to say to fill the space. What could he? He knew about all this already. Hisoka's confession just brought it all back as fresh as the day he had felt it. The guilt, knowing he had pushed Hisoka into becoming just like him, had come too late.

"It was a mistake. I knew that the moment you _congratulated_ me for it." Hisoka grimaced at the memory. "Then I only had myself to blame, for my foolish expectations. I had started to think you cared—"

"I _did_ care. I _do_!"

"Just not enough to keep it in your pants?"

Tsuzuki clamped down on his protest. He couldn't deny he deserved condemnation for that. It was forbidden, like Hisoka said, and he never learned his lesson.

"So maybe I am angry about you and Sakuraiji," Hisoka said under his breath. "I'm pissed off, and hurt. You've been at this for seventy-five years, Tsuzuki, you should have known better."

 _I know. I did._

"But that's the difference. What you did to Sakuraiji was your choice, and you'll have to find a way to live with it. _I'll_ have to find a way to live with it, because I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at you the same way again."

That tore at Tsuzuki's heart. He hadn't given much thought to what he did being a betrayal of _Hisoka's_ trust. And why not? Because he had blinded himself to the possibility that Hisoka had deep affection for him? Denied that Hisoka _could_ love him, after the traumas he had suffered? No. Those were just more empty excuses.

"But," Hisoka continued through the tremor in his voice, "even though I could blame you all I wanted for Muraki, if I thought that would make me feel any better, that doesn't make him your fault. You weren't aware of any of the experiments his grandfather was doing with your blood. You had no idea what Muraki did to me, or that I even existed, until I showed up here as your partner. You certainly didn't choose what that man did, or order him to do it. So you can say 'If not for me' all you want, and yeah, there might be some truth to it, but that doesn't make what happened to me _your fault_."

Tsuzuki couldn't believe it. He should have felt like he had dodged a bullet. He should have been relieved that this _wasn't_ what he had feared. Hisoka didn't hate him.

Instead, it felt like that proverbial bullet was lodged in his heart. He couldn't help feeling that this wasn't the outcome he deserved, and therefore he _had_ to be suspicious of it. He wanted more than anything to reach out to Hisoka, to thank him from the bottom of his heart for this clemency, but to do so felt like it would be reaching for something Tsuzuki had no right to. Even if had believed for so long that Hisoka's forgiveness was all he wanted.

But _was_ this forgiveness? "If that's how you feel, then how come you're still upset?"

That earned him a none-too-light punch in the chest. And one he absolutely deserved. "I'm upset that after everything we went through together, you still didn't think you could trust me to handle the truth! Idiot."

Somehow, hearing that word in Hisoka's voice again made Tsuzuki very happy. Or would have.

"And it's this damn guilt of yours, too!" Hisoka whimpered as a fresh wave of tears broke their dam. "You have no idea how much you're projecting, do you? It's no wonder you're such a basket case. I feel like I'm barely holding it together and I'm only catching a contact-low—"

Tsuzuki did wrap Hisoka up in his arms then, holding him close about the shoulders, his cheek on Hisoka's crown. Relieved when Hisoka didn't push him away, like force of habit probably told him to, but leaned in, blotting his tears on Tsuzuki's shirt.

He hated that this was how they had to get to this point, and wished it could be any other way, but if Tsuzuki was grateful for one thing, it was Hisoka's new willingness to touch and be touched by him. Physical intimacy had always come so easily to Tsuzuki, but he felt he was beginning to understand, truly understand now, how great a gap Hisoka had to bridge inside himself just to do this much. He wondered if Hisoka knew how much this simple gesture healed Tsuzuki's soul.

He did as asked, and walled some of his guilt and self-loathing off from Hisoka. At least, as much as he was able with those emotions running so high. He didn't want to have to release Hisoka too soon.

"I won't ask if you can forgive me," Tsuzuki murmured against his hair. "I don't think I can ever deserve your forgiveness. I just wish I could show you how sorry I am. For all of it."

"Tsuzuki." He could feel Hisoka's eye-roll against his chest. "How many times do I have to tell you before you believe me? _I know how you feel_. I'm—"

"I know, I know." It just felt like this was too easy, and it wasn't supposed to be.

* * *

Tatsumi shot up from his power nap with a start when Hisoka slammed the stapler down on his desk.

He was about to chastise the boy, but the look on Hisoka's face stopped him.

"You knew about him and Muraki, didn't you, and you didn't tell me!"

 _How the hell did he find out . . .?_ The question was on Tatsumi's lips, but he saw it was futile to voice it. Hisoka was an empath, after all, and if Tsuzuki had finally confessed how he was related to Muraki, Tatsumi could easily have been implicated. He couldn't blame Hisoka for treating him like a co-conspirator, when the shoe fit.

"He asked me not to say anything," Tatsumi said, gesturing for Hisoka to keep his voice down. "He wanted me to swear to it, in fact. He was afraid of what it would do to your relationship if you knew the truth."

"Worse than him running off and all of us practically being accused of sedition for sticking up for him? Worse than almost losing him forever?"

No, Tatsumi could agree what _had_ happened was pretty bad. "I didn't say it was a good decision on his part to keep it from you. But it was Tsuzuki's right to decide whether to tell you or not. If I'd gone and told you behind his back, I would have been making that choice for him, and I respect him too much to do that. I respect _both_ of you too much to do that."

He fixed Hisoka a hard look as he let that sink in.

"So before you go branding me a hypocrite, did you happen to tell him the truth about what _you_ are yet?"

The color rising to Hisoka's cheeks and the silent terror in his eyes told Tatsumi more surely than a spoken answer that the boy had not.

* * *

Zepar's eyes went wide with surprise when he arrived in the Living World, and saw just who it was who had summoned him there.

"I don't need this shit," he started to say, and attempted to teleport back to Hell.

But when he found himself anchored to the Living World, and to the pentacle of light beneath him, he panicked. And shot Muraki a murderous glare.

The doctor, on the other hand, just smiled and waited patiently for his catch to exhaust itself.

"Let me go," Zepar tried through clenched teeth. "I don't answer to you anymore. Remember? Ashtaroth took back the powers she lent you when your contract was concluded. You can't call on your hellhounds to do your dirty work for you now, and you certainly can't call on me."

He allowed himself a wry grin, even in his precarious position. "How is your _eye_ feeling, by the way? Vision acting up on you? Focus a little . . . unreliable?"

Muraki resisted raising his hand to the offending eye. It would not do to show the devil any sign that he was right, and let him take news of Muraki's weakness back with him to his master. "I make do," Muraki said as he stepped closer to the circle. "That isn't why I brought you here. You will tell your master that I want to make her a deal, but it isn't for the fucking eye. It's for Ukyou."

Zepar laughed. That should have been Muraki's first tip-off that something in Hell had changed since he had last spoken with the devil.

"Tell her I'm ready to offer a trade," Muraki pushed on nonetheless. "My soul in exchange for her returning Ukyou to this world alive and unharmed, and renouncing any claim to her child."

"Would that I could," Zepar purred. "It's a tempting offer, you playing Orpheus, but it just comes too darned late."

Muraki narrowed his eyes at him. "Why too late?"

But Zepar had said all he was willingly going to say. "I don't. Answer. To you. Anymore," he repeated in a sing-song tone.

Enough with games. Muraki shot out with his hand, sinking it deep into the devil's very essence. If Zepar had had a heart or some similar organ within him to grasp, Muraki would have found it, and squeezed it till it burst. As it was, he seized the largest root of energy within Zepar's soul he could find, and held onto it tight.

Zepar gasped as he felt his energy start to leave him, sucked from him as if through a straw. This should not have been possible! For a human to do this to the likes of him . . .

"I think you'll find I still have some tricks up my sleeves that even Ashtaroth cannot revoke," Muraki said as he held Zepar there, his own strength increasing by the second. "This one, for example, I discovered and honed myself. It's very useful, I find, for convincing demons to tell the truth."

Zepar clamped his mouth shut, determined not to give Muraki the satisfaction. But proof of how dearly he struggled flickered across his face, as he was slowly stripped of his glamour, like dermis off raw muscle.

"I'll ask again. Why did you say I was too late?" Muraki's heart pounded with dread, but he had to know: "What's happened to Ukyou?"

The devil fought with himself, but eventually could withstand the agony no longer. " _We don't have her,_ " he gritted out, as though he were fighting to bite back words that had a mind of their own. The dulcet tones he had used in his various guises was leaving him with his strength, replaced by a horrible, grating gargle of a voice. " _She's gone—_ "

"Where?"

" _Meifu. The traitor helped her escape, and the shinigami took her. . . ._ "

Muraki released him then. He had all he needed, information- and energy-wise.

And Zepar fell to his knees in the circle. His being felt raw, abused, flayed both physically and in spirit. A humiliation he should not have allowed the doctor to live to see, but he was sapped and so long as the circle held him he could do nothing. Not even disguise his hideous form.

"Thank you, Zepar," Muraki said, though he did not think the devil deserved his gratitude. He flexed his hand, feeling the nerves buzz within it and all down his arm. This was why he hesitated to drink demonic energy. It was more powerful than any other kind he'd tasted—save for Tsuzuki's, and that was to be expected. They were not wholly different. But Tsuzuki's energy was perfection, whereas this was like overindulging on an exquisite wine. A dizzying, euphoric experience in the moment, but he was sure to regret it later. "Now you may go. As you're so keen on reminding me, I have no more use for you—"

" _Wait._ "

With deep, ragged breaths like a stick drawn across a washboard, Zepar hauled himself to his feet. Bits of glamour flickered across him here and there, with great effort and little success—an obscene sight, like watching a butterfly try to cram itself back into its pupal shell. " _What do you intend to do with that information?_ "

Muraki had to laugh at the reversal of their positions. "Ah, but I don't answer to you anymore," he said, and sent the devil on his way, back to Hell.

* * *

Ukyou was speechless as she took in the grand interior around her. The Castle of Candles was immense, and the Baroque trims and decorations far exceeded any expectations she may have had after her time among the modern buildings of Juuohcho's main campus.

"And through here is the formal dining room," the butler Watson warbled as he led the tour. Ukyou still hadn't adjusted to the sight of him, yet in a morbidly fascinated sort of way found it difficult not to stare. How a man could be so decayed and still move so quickly and speak so cheerfully was beyond her comprehension; but she was, after all, in the Land of the Dead, and probably should not have been quite so disconcerted when Watson's ear fell off in the middle of the tour and he casually pressed it back on again.

"Breakfast is served at nine," he went on, "luncheon upon request and tea at four in the afternoon. Dinner is white-tie for the men, evening gowns for the ladies—"

"I'm afraid we shall have to dispense with the formalities for a little while, Watson," said a new, smooth, deep voice. "After all, Dr. Sakuraiji came to us in a hurry and didn't have time to pack the necessary attire."

"Some could be procured for her, my lord Count," Watson tried helpfully, but did not press the issue further.

Ukyou looked around herself, trying to find the source of the new voice, but she didn't see anyone.

The others in her party, however, seemed to have no trouble at all. "I want to thank you, Count, for agreeing to this arrangement," said Konoe as he stepped forward to shake someone's hand. "I apologize for any imposition."

Then Ukyou noticed him. Even forewarned, she couldn't help her gasp. He was nothing but a floating mask and pair of gloves!

Yet there must have been someone behind them, even if he had somehow rendered himself invisible. When one of the gloves shook Konoe's hand, there seemed to be weight behind it. "Not at all," the mask said in a voice that dripped like dark honey. "It is my great pleasure to welcome the doctor to my humble abode. We do not often receive visitors, and visitors of the living kind are the rarest by far."

"She isn't here to visit," Keijou said sharply. "She's here because someone decided this would be the best place to keep her safe. I can only hope they weren't mistaken."

Nonomiya shot him a sidelong glance in warning, but as Keijou was occupied staring the Count down, it went wasted.

"Mr. Keijou, is it?" the Count said with a hum. "Is that a note of jealousy I detect?"

"Agent Keijou was in Hell with Dr. Sakuraiji," Konoe explained before the young man could embarrass himself further. "Since he swore an oath to protect her there, Chief Todoroki thought it only fitting that he be allowed to continue in her service while she's with us in Meifu."

"Oaths sworn in the company of demons aren't always best kept," the Count said darkly. But just as quickly, his mood lightened. "Well! If he is so dedicated, I shall count on him to do his utmost. Ms. Nonomiya, I am pleased to see they've assigned you to this detail and not your partner."

"Thank you, Count," she beamed, matching his amicable air. As much as she wished she could be sharing this assignment with Kazuma—for one because she had a feeling Keijou still blamed her for her role in what had happened to him and his partner—she understood that the Count probably hadn't forgiven Kazuma yet for leading the raid on his mansion. Even if she wasn't _personally_ responsible for any damages to his property.

"Which would make this Dr. Sakuraiji," the Count said, turning at last to Ukyou. He bowed—or, at least, she assumed he did—and extended his glove, which she rather reluctantly placed her hand in. "Enchanted, my dear. I've heard such good things about you already that I have been dying for a tête-à-tête. Perhaps you wouldn't mind indulging me after you've had a chance to get settled? I would be honored to show you around my extensive rose garden."

She could feel his breath warm across the back of her hand, and couldn't be sure if that made his invisibility more or less assuring. Ukyou only hoped his offer hadn't been a double entendre. Watari had warned her the Count was known for such things. "I . . . I suppose that would be alright," she said, unable to keep the small tremor out of her voice.

"It's my appearance, isn't it?" the Count said mournfully. "Of course, you must find it discomfiting. No need to deny it, dear. I'm sorry to say my position requires me to keep my identity concealed at all times, but perhaps I can find a solution that would put us both at ease. You see, Doctor, I wish for you and that precious child you carry to feel as relaxed as you would at a five-star resort for as long as you two are in my care. Anything you should desire during your stay, simply ask and I shall make sure it is fulfilled with all due haste."

"You might not know it to look at him," Nonomiya explained for Ukyou's benefit, "but the Count is one of the most powerful beings in Enma-cho. You're safer here than anywhere else."

"My castle is a sacred space," the Count added. "It would be blasphemous for anyone to try to enter here with evil intentions or take it by force. At least, they wouldn't make the same foolish mistake twice."

"How about Watson shows you all to your suite?" Konoe was quick to interrupt him. Ukyou didn't need to hear about the raid Todoroki had ordered on the place just a few months ago.

But more than that, he wanted a chance to speak to the Count alone.

"You'll probably hear rumors," Konoe said when the other three were out of earshot. "I thought you should hear it from me—"

"It's Tsuzuki's. Isn't it."

He didn't say it like a question.

Which concerned Konoe. "Is that what people are saying?"

"No. They're saying the child is Muraki's. But I don't believe it." The flowery voice the Count had used in Ukyou's presence was gone, replaced by a dark gravity that cut through any bull Konoe may have attempted to sell him. "When I heard Tsuzuki had spent seven months living under her roof, it was the only natural conclusion I could make. Don't forget, Konoe, I know that boy. I know how he works, and what little regard he has for rules."

"You don't find it improbable? He has a shinigami's body—"

"And is himself the product of a demon, remember. It wouldn't be the first time such an impossible thing has happened."

"What are you going to tell Enma?"

The Count turned to him, as if shocked Konoe would think that question even needed to be asked. "Nothing, for now. If it was known Ms. Sakuraiji is carrying Tsuzuki's child, I would have a horde outside my door trying to beat it down and kill it. I swore to you, did I not, that I would do everything in my power to keep them both safe, and I intend to keep that promise, even if it means I must set myself against my king. It wouldn't be the first time for that, either."


	29. This masquerade

Any event hosted by the Count at the Castle of Candles was an event to look forward to. Even those who found the Count himself unsettling, or obnoxious, or a pervert, or just in general the last bureaucrat in Enma-cho they ever wanted to deal with, were quick to make an exception for his parties, which were notoriously lavish and really the only time all the various departments were able and willing to set aside their differences and unwind together.

And it was an excuse to dress up and to put one's dance moves to use, which Tsuzuki and Wakaba found to be an inexhaustible topic of conversation. "And this year I'll have Hajime all to myself!" Wakaba gushed, eyes sparkling. "No Kuro-chan to get in the way. We can dance until we just can't stand anymore!"

"No good," Terazuma piped up from across the office. "I told you before, Kannuki. I can't dance."

" _Can't_ dance, or _won't_ dance? I've seen you bust a move, Hajime, when you don't think I'm watching."

The former-detective went pink down to his collar at that. He mumbled something about sciatica acting up that the others only just managed to catch.

"I could teach you," Tsuzuki offered. "I was a dance hall regular in my Taisho days. Waltz and foxtrot are really quite easy, once you get the hang of the basic steps and holds. I never quite mastered the Charleston as much as I'd like to have, it was sort of after my time, but if that's more your style . . ."

Listening very eagerly to this exchange, Saya and Yuma tried their hardest to refrain from expressing how much they wished to see that.

For once, Terazuma was at a loss for zingers. It seemed Tsuzuki's earnest offer to help had taken the piss right out of him. "Hard pass," was all he grumbled.

Judging by her slow clap, Wakaba was impressed. "That was an unusually generous offer. No death threats or even a whiff of sarcasm." She leaned in toward Tsuzuki. "'Fess up. You're a pod person, aren't you?"

Which got a laugh out of Tsuzuki. "I guess I'm just in a celebratory mood, is all. I'm grateful to be back—and to be accepted back with open arms. I plan on taking full advantage of this party."

"In other words, drinking himself senseless on the Count's tab," said Terazuma.

"There is also that."

Speaking of things that had changed in the last year: "That's right," Hisoka said, remembering Tsuzuki had lost his apartment and everything that was in it. "Tsuzuki, don't you need to get a new tux?" The gallery opening last night, at which they'd concluded their case, hadn't been such a formal affair, so it didn't cross Hisoka's mind until now.

Saya and Yuma were right there and ready to jump to the rescue with suggestions, or offer to accompany him shopping, but Tsuzuki waved them off. "I keep a spare in a locker on Bureau grounds. So I'm prepared in case some emergency formal event ever comes up."

"How just like Tsuzuki," Yuma sighed, and Saya said, "So cool, like James Bond!"

What Tsuzuki failed to mention was that his tuxedo was nearly as old as his career. With a wing collar and full-dress waistcoat, and a peaked-lapel tailcoat that flattered his waist and hips in an almost androgynizing way. "It smells a little like mothballs," he said when they all met up again that night at the Castle of Candles, "but it still fits!"

Why it wouldn't was beyond Hisoka. Dead people didn't gain weight—though the way Tsuzuki could put away desserts, if there was ever an exception to that rule, it ought to be him.

"It's perfect! So Tsuzuki!" Yuma applauded, while Saya mumbled into her handkerchief, "So classy, like a young Gary Cooper!"

Hair slicked back, a few stubborn strands trailing rakishly over his forehead, holding himself as though he felt quite in-his-element in a tuxedo, Tsuzuki seemed to Hisoka like someone from the cover of jazz sheet music from the Taisho era. Hisoka always felt so small in one in comparison, knowing he didn't nor would he ever have the adult proportions to properly fill a tailcoat out. Hakama and haori were more his style, but at a function like this, they would have caused him to stick out.

Maybe it was because things had been starting to feel back-to-normal, or he was still riding the high from that kiss they'd shared under the cherry trees, but somehow Hisoka had capitulated to the peer pressure. . . .

"Aren't you glad you finally trusted us to pick out your suit, Hisoka?" Yuma said beside him, patiently awaiting her due praise and gratitude.

"The midnight-blue velvet and shawl collar are so on-trend this season!" said Saya. "So mid-century chic! Doesn't he just remind you of Buddy Holly?"

"Or Elvis! He's a hunk-a hunk-a burning love!"

"Uh, yeah. You guys actually did a good job." Hisoka didn't know much about either of those people, other than that they were rock stars from long before he was born, but he was pretty sure he didn't look much like either one of them. He sent Wakaba a look weighted with thanks, certain her input was the only reason the other two hadn't foisted on him something so laden with fake flowers and ruffles even an enka singer wouldn't go near it.

But when Tsuzuki leaned over and said, almost quiet enough for only Hisoka to hear, "I think it suits you perfectly," that made all the embarrassment of being Saya and Yuma's Ken doll worth it. No double-entendres or dirty jokes, no belittling comments that made Hisoka feel like a child playing dress-up. He could stand tall and proud in his new suit knowing that Tsuzuki thought he looked good, and couldn't stop staring at Hisoka.

Until Tsuzuki saw something else that made his eyes light up like stars, and all his cool, natural elegance evaporate in an instant. " _Wha~_ I don't believe it. . . ."

He practically levitated to the centerpiece of the buffet, a trio of fountains that glistened under the lights of the chandeliers like . . . like the kind of fountains Tsuzuki had imagined only existed in Paradise. Not even in Gensoukai had he encountered all three in one place, and that was supposed to be a world where anything you could imagine was possible.

"I never thought I would see such a rare alignment!" he exclaimed. "The Three C's of luxury, united at long last! Cheese . . . Champagne . . ."

Each one was more glorious and mouthwatering than the last. But none compared to the third fountain: " _Chocolate~!_ "

"It's like I died all over again, except this time I went to Heaven~" Watari crooned as he held his cheeks.

"At least I know where you two'll be hanging out all evening," Hisoka said.

Tsuzuki was already spearing a naked petit four on a long fork and sticking it under the stream of molten chocolate.

"What could we have possibly done to deserve this blessing?" said Natsume, dabbing at tears of joy, while K tried to stretch herself up tall enough to lap at the fondue fountain.

"Nothing," said Tatsumi. "I'm sure it's all coming out of our taxes. Along with the Castle's restorations. And since I helped pay for it, I intend to take full advantage of the situation forthwith!"

And wasting no time, he grabbed a plate and started heaping it with skewers of dippable items.

Come to think of it, Hisoka thought, the Count was always spoiling them and himself with expensive treats, and had seemingly endless funds at his disposal from which to extend Tsuzuki a loan, without ever being reimbursed. But where did he come by his riches? Hisoka had never paid much attention to the economy of Enma-cho before, but it was a mystery where the funds for anything came from, considering every investigation demanded more money.

And speaking of their gracious host. . . .

" _I kiss your lips/ I hold you tight,_ " the Count warbled to himself in English to a gothic sort of tune, as he sashayed about the hall, " _Your body's swaying in the pale moonlight/ We dance until the break of day/ We'll tango the night away—_ "

" _Ol_ _é_ _!_ " Natsume finished for him. "I didn't know you knew Falco, Count."

"One cannot beat the classics, Mr. Natsume," the other declared as he moved down the table, adjusting platters and decorations and still humming his tune.

Examining his petit four, Tsuzuki said under his breath, "Just don't be disappointed when you ask me to dance and I say no— _eek!_ "

"Never fear, my dear Tsuzuki," the Count murmured, appearing suddenly beside him, "I am sure we two shall be tangoing in our dreams tonight, where no one can cut in between us. Waltzing the timeless Viennese waltz, _ho-ri-zon-tal-ly_. . . ."

Watari and Natsume made an earnest effort not to laugh, before deciding it wasn't worth it. They slapped their knees and cackled until tears came to their eyes.

"Horizontally because we'll be in our beds!" Tsuzuki tried to explain, though everything he said somehow just made things worse. "Our _own_ beds! Not anywhere near each other. Asleep. A-and dreaming—pure, innocent, family-friendly dreams!"

It was no use. Watari fell to his knees, all but hyperventilating with laughter, and Natsume was shamelessly groping a nearby column for support. Tsuzuki shot them an evil look. Lot of help those two clowns were. . . .

"Hisoka!" Of course, that was what he needed to put an end to the subject. Or, rather, whom he needed. He grabbed Hisoka by the arm and hauled him toward the fountains, saying, "You've got to try the fondue! Remember that time I was trying to explain it to you, and you said you'd never had it—"

"I know what fondue is, Tsuzuki. (And I _told_ you why I don't eat it!)" And Hisoka _really_ didn't want to get into the reason in front of all these people. It was none of their business.

But alas, Tsuzuki and his accursedly short, selective memory— "Come on, Hisoka~ If you're worried about digestive issues, the wine in it is supposed to help with that. Just try one little bite, it's so decadent and delicious~"

"No! You can't make me!"

Tempting as it may have been to stay and fawn over Tsuzuki further (and, in truth, the Count had all evening to do that), he had moved on to fulfill his duties as host, making sure to greet each group of guests personally. Even if he wasn't overly fond of some of them.

"Ahh, Chief Todoroki," he welcomed the head of Peacekeeping in a sufficiently magnanimous tone of voice. Though he could not seem to conjure it up for his companion: "And Agent Kazuma. Hm. Well, I suppose my invite did apply to everyone. Are you certain you couldn't find _any_ reason to demure?"

Kazuma Shin crossed her arms over her generous chest, and despite the tight, feminine lines of her cocktail dress, shifted to a tough, guarded stance. But there was a cool smile on her lips when she said, "It's good to see you again, too, my lord Count. Under happier circumstances."

"I do hope you will accept my apology for the inconveniences you endured," Todoroki said with a bow, "which I make on behalf of my entire department."

Though Kazuma wore the sarcastic smile, it was her chief's tone of voice that the Count didn't trust. On the surface, Todoroki always tried to sound subservient in their meetings, almost to the point of sycophantic, but the Count wasn't fooled. He knew the type of viper that Todoroki was as well as he knew himself.

"And the damages to my property?" said the Count.

Todoroki's back stiffened before he dipped his head lower. Was that resentment that the Count detected in his posture? "You have my apologies there as well, of course. I hope you understand it was never the intent of my department to cause such wanton destruction in the course of an internal investigation. I take full responsibility for the miscommunication."

But not, the Count knew, financial responsibility. The Judgment Bureau would not allow him to bankrupt one of their pet departments, no matter how the Count itched to bring Peacekeeping to task for their overreach. "I would expect no less," he said cordially enough, even if he didn't mean it. "As they say, the bull stops here."

"I think you mean the buck, my lord," Todoroki corrected him, though they both knew he hadn't. "I'm sure you understand that it was nothing personal. My agents were simply following King Enma's wishes. I do hope that a repeat of the events that led to the damage to your castle will not have any reason to occur in the future."

"Now that Tsuzuki's back in our King's good graces, you mean."

Out of the corner of the Count's eye, Kazuma acted quickly to hide her snort in her fist, but she could not hide the width of her grin from him. Nor did he miss how Todoroki bristled at his words, before he managed to compose and excuse himself to go join the party.

"That was a low blow," Kazuma muttered to the Count when they were alone. Though what she really wanted to do was give him a high-five.

"Was it?" The Count sounded shocked she would accuse him of such. "Here I thought I was merely reminding your chief where his bread is buttered. And you, my dear? I suppose you'll be wanting to confer with your partner as to the well-being of Dr. Sakuraiji."

Kazuma blinked, though she told herself it should not have surprised her by now that the Count knew everyone's motives and desires as though he had read them out of a book. Even if Detective Imai was technically her current partner, it was Nonomiya who was on her mind. "You'll grant me the clearance to see her? Even after what I did to you?"

"You were following Enma's wishes, were you not? Just as your chief said. It wasn't as though you _wanted_ to raid my castle and arrest Chief Konoe, was it?"

Kazuma was so touched by his graciousness, she felt an uncharacteristic thickening of tears in her throat, but quickly swallowed them down.

Instead, she extended her hand between them. Then it was the Count's turn to look surprised.

"If you'll allow me, sir," Kazuma said, "I intend to do whatever I can for as long as this afterlife lasts to make it up to you. I hope there may come a day when I've restored your trust in me. And in my department."

The Count did not take her hand. Yet, he hoped she understood he was sincere when he said: "A being as old as myself does not easily forgive, or forget, slights against his person. It's my nature, you see, and try though I might to change it, I remain a stubborn old coot stuck in my ways. Still, I can be civil, and bury the hatchet, as they say. Would you do me the honor, Ms. Kazuma, of being the first to accompany me on a tour of my castle's recent renovations?"

The Count clapped his gloved hands then and announced: "If I may have everyone's attention, it is now time to start the first tour of my newly restored castle. Though attendance isn't mandatory, it should be noted that one's willingness to participate in work-related social activities outside the office _does_ reflect on one's annual performance reviews. That being said, if I could have the first twenty or so volunteers line up over here. . . ."

"Let's get this over with!" Tatsumi said as he straightened his jacket. Konoe pulled a reluctant Watari away from the buffet by the back of his collar.

To Tsuzuki's surprise, Hisoka looked as though he were pretending he hadn't heard. "You're not coming, Hisoka?"

"I'll catch one of the later ones," Hisoka assured him. "Maybe they won't be so busy. I still haven't adjusted to the crowds yet."

"Oh, right. Of course."

That satisfied Tsuzuki enough to leave his side and join the tour group. It was typical of Hisoka to have an adverse reaction to the emotional milieu of such a large gathering, and there was something about the Castle of Candles in particular that only made the reaction worse.

So it wasn't really lying, Hisoka told himself as he wandered off to find a quiet corner. He really was feeling overwhelmed. It just so happened that this time it was the pressure bubbling up from inside that made him want to hide himself away. This giddy, unsettled feeling behind his navel, this nervous energy that made him fear he might do something he would later regret. Standing in the lee of a marble pillar, he leaned against its cool support, trying to slow his heartbeat. And appease the slithering within—

"Food too rich for you, too?"

Hisoka started, relieved to see it was only Natsume coming over to talk to him, even if he still would rather have been left in peace. "Ah—yeah. Sort of." _I could go with that._ "This is the second dinner party I've attended in as many nights, and that's two too many as far as I'm concerned. I've never had the constitution for big social gatherings."

"Me neither," Natsume chuckled, "but I find my own way to enjoy them."

And so saying, he proffered a highball glass of something bubbly to Hisoka.

"Oh. No, I don't think I should—"

"It's ginger ale," Natsume assured him. "To calm your stomach. And nerves, and anything else that may need calming in this sort of environment."

 _I don't suppose it works on ancient vengeful snake gods that want to take over your body, too?_ But Hisoka gave it a sip. It didn't taste entirely like the ginger ale he remembered, a bit more herbal and biting with a warmth left on his lips. Then again, he wasn't keen on overly sweet things, and this particular ginger ale had just the right amount of bitter to balance out the sweetness. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

But that wasn't what Natsume had come over to say. It was obvious by the way he stared, as if waiting for Hisoka to extend him the invitation to share his thoughts.

He went ahead anyway. "Can I ask you something, Kurosaki? We were partners for six months, and I know that's not a really long time around here and that you and I never really connected on a personal level. But it's long enough to get a sense of a person's moods. To tell when something's bothering them."

Shit, Hisoka thought. _Did K tell him what happened to me in the Imaginary World?_ How _would she tell him?_ Natsume may have proven himself trustworthy, but that didn't mean Hisoka wanted him knowing about Yatonokami. He opened his mouth to deny everything—

"You've seemed less take-charge and more back-seat since Tsuzuki came back. Er, excuse me for saying so. But I thought I should check with you to make sure everything's okay. That he's not giving you a hard time."

Hisoka tried not to sigh too obviously in relief. Of course, even though Natsume had reached some sort of truce with Tsuzuki, the old animosity between them wasn't so easily shaken off. The Tsuzuki Natsume remembered wasn't the same one Hisoka knew. Natsume's wasn't so forgiving.

"Things are fine between me and Tsuzuki," Hisoka lied—well, stretched the truth. Their interactions over the last couple days had been tense, wooden, ever since Hisoka found out Tsuzuki was the father of Ukyou's child. And Muraki. "It's just taking a while to get back into the swing of things, is all. When someone that important disappears from your life for that long, you can't just pretend they were never gone. It's something I'm working on. I want to mend the relationship we have, make it stronger even, but I know it isn't going to happen all at once. Not until we've both dealt fully with everything that's happened over the last nine months."

OK, so that was probably a bigger and truer confession than Hisoka had meant to let slip. As if to keep anything else from slipping out behind it, he took a generous swig of his ginger ale. It seemed to spread through him when it hit his stomach, like a comforting blanket smothering everything he didn't want to think about. He had to hand it to Natsume for choosing the right medicine.

Hisoka tapped his half-empty glass. "Think I could get another one of these?"

* * *

The Count's tour of the Castle led them at first through places familiar. The library, where he kept some particularly dangerous storybooks. A statue gallery whose denizens still showed signs of battle scarring from Kazuma's raid. Eventually they came to a wing that Tatsumi wasn't familiar with. Though Tsuzuki assured him he had been here before.

Which wasn't surprising. Tatsumi didn't know of anyone who had spent as much time in the Castle of Candles as Tsuzuki. Other than Chief Konoe, perhaps—though he suspected their respective reasons for visiting were rather different. "These _are_ the offices where the Count keeps his most prized works of art," Tsuzuki said, "and magical objects from around the worlds, so the doorways are enchanted to randomly change the configuration of the rooms if the person entering isn't authorized to be here."

"How right you are, my bright young pupil," the Count said proudly. "That is why I have taken it upon myself to lead this tour personally."

"Here I thought it was so he could see our faces as he boasted over his ill-gotten gains," Tatsumi muttered under his breath, but the Count either didn't catch that or pretended not to.

"So anyone thinking about coming back later and stealing anything ought to think again. You'll find this place a maze more maddening and tangled in strange loops than was ever dreamed up by any Daedalus, and populated by far worse mind-terrors than minotaurs. Why, I once caught an oni who had thought to steal a rare, enchanted Gajapuri ruby he'd heard rumors was here. There was no telling how many days or months he had wandered these halls before Watson found him, the poor soul, as he was quite out of his head by that time. All he seemed able to say about his ordeal was, 'Red rum'. He just kept repeating those words over and over, refused to say anything else. Only . . . _Red rum~_ "

"Red rum?" Tsuzuki said to himself. "Is that a type of liquor?"

"Knowing the Count," Watari muttered a nervous aside, "Red Rum could be anything from a childhood sled or cute puppy to some sort of eldritch horror."

"Or worse. An eldritch horror disguised as a cute puppy on a childhood sled!" The two shuddered at the thought.

The tour continued through a room one wall of which was entirely taken up by a busy fresco depicting a Renaissance battle scene, replete with lovingly rendered horse butts. A lost work of Leonardo da Vinci, the Count told them. "But of course," he chuckled, somehow making his mask seem to wink, "it isn't very lost if it's here, is it?"

"And here you'll find one of the oldest pieces in my collection," said the Count as they stepped into yet another chamber. "A replica of the coffin of Osiris himself, gifted to Enma by his counterparts in the Duat over a thousand years ago."

Some of the tour group oohed and ahhed over the room's centerpiece, a stone sarcophagus embraced from all corners by carved winged goddesses. "The original was gilded cedar wood, of course, not to mention chopped into a thousand little pieces and scattered to all points of the globe. In an ironic turn of events, this copy has just been restored after being broken into a half dozen pieces itself." His tone soured. "By some overhasty Peacekeeper I shan't mention by name. . . ."

"How was anyone supposed to know it was valuable," a voice piped up from the back of the group, "when it was in the garden being used as a flower pot!"

The Count clapped his hands together. "That reminds me of a fun party game! It's called Let's See Who Fits In The Box Best. I would so love to demonstrate it for you all, if I could but have a volunteer from the audience? Mr. Flowerpot, perhaps? Don't be shy, step right up to the front!"

"And on that note," Konoe spoke up over him, "let's all mosey on over to the next stop on the tour."

Thankfully the Count took the hint, and led the way.

It was no exaggeration to say that after slowly making their way through one room after another, trying to sound impressed about musty old works of art when all they wanted was to get back to the drinking and dancing, the tour were getting restless. But all that bored energy evaporated the moment they stepped into the glow of one particular room—though "hall" was perhaps a better term for it.

It was a grand space, whose far walls they could not even make out through the dark and the flickering lights of millions of candles. Like a universe full of stars, one had to wonder if there even _were_ walls, or if the Hall of Candles had no real boundaries but existed, self-contained, a world within worlds. Their group merely stood in the antechamber, yet the sight of all those avatars of real, mortal souls was enough to bring the shinigami to awed silence. Most served their whole time in Enma-cho without ever being accorded the privilege of seeing this sacred place. Or setting foot here. Or breathing in its remarkably clean and smoke-free air.

"I don't need to tell you," said the Count without a trace of humor, "that this is where the magic happens. What you see before you are the actual representations of human souls. From here, I am able to monitor any anomalous occurrences in the lives and deaths of mortals and report them immediately to Lord Enma himself. Feel free to breathe normally," he added, noticing how most of his guests seemed to be holding it in. "These are not your normal candles. It takes more than a quick puff of breath to extinguish their flames."

"But they can be altered from here?" said a voice in the back of the crowd.

Tsuzuki and Tatsumi both looked to see who had asked such an ominous question, but neither could find the source. "Perish the thought," was all the Count would say on the matter. "Needless to say, it is unconscionable that anyone _would_ interfere with these candles."

But that did not mean they couldn't be tampered with, Konoe thought. What better way for King Enma to end Muraki Yukitaka's life prematurely than from the comfort of his Castle? Unless he had taken a foray into the Living World himself. But it was difficult to imagine Enma dirtying his own hands with that business. Who better to act as his assassin by proxy than the man possessing a mask of invisibility?

But it was what occupied a pedestal in a roped-off area in the center of the chamber that drew Tsuzuki's attention: an enormous tome that must have weighed a good fifteen kilos at least, bound in rich leather and worn with age.

"No. Can't be," Watari said beside him, seeing the same thing. "That isn't . . . the _actual_ Kiseki?"

The Count, overhearing, laughed. "Don't be ridiculous. Do you think our great and wise King would truly allow the Book of the Dead to be left out where anyone might chance across it? It's another replica, of course. Though a special one. It updates itself in real-time, so I needn't leave my post to consult the official record."

 _Just another replica, huh?_ Tsuzuki couldn't say why he had suddenly felt a strong desire to reach out and take the book. If it was just a copy, then it was not as though a person could affect reality with it.

Still. He couldn't have been the only one who felt drawn to its power, and the power its twin—wherever that was—promised its holder. The power over life and death, at the stroke of a pen. A year ago, Tsuzuki would have said he had no interest in that. But a lot could change in a year. And the thought of holding the fates of mortal souls in his hands _was_ intoxicating.

"Well. I've probably let the lot of you linger here long enough," the Count said, back to his usual air of frivolity. "We're nearing the end of our tour and there are others patiently waiting their turn to take in all this splendor. Just a dozen more rooms to admire."

There were groans from the tour group at that. A dozen more rooms wasn't what most of them would have counted as "nearing the end."

"Oh, do cheer up. You all sound like a troupe of zombies. A zom-semble, if you will. And we do still have a lovely collection of cursed jewelry through the ages to get to. Now, who here remembers that classic of the nineteen-eighties, _Romancing the Stone_?"

* * *

"Knock knock," Kazuma said on the other side of the door, "I brought cake."

"Thank heavens, I could _kiss_ you!" Nonomiya said when she answered. That was, if Shin's hands weren't already occupied with said cake, and if she wasn't sure doing so would awaken the Black Lion's wrath. But a few days stuck in the Castle, barely even seeing daylight, let alone another familiar face, had a way of making a person feel like she was trapped here for an eternity.

"I was going to bring a bottle of bubbly, too," said Kazuma, "but then I remembered, you know, bun in the oven. Is Keijou here?"

"He's taking a break, enjoying the festivities," Nonomiya told her. Then said to Ukyou, "You remember my colleague, Kazuma Shin?"

Hair pulled up in a French twist and in a tight dress and makeup that emphasized her feminine traits, Kazuma looked quite changed from the last time Ukyou had seen her. But Ukyou confirmed she remembered their meeting.

It was the kindness of Kazuma's smile, though, rather than the fierce protective vibe Ukyou had gotten from her the last time, that put her at ease as she gratefully accepted a slice of cake. That and her lack of the officious Peacekeeper great coat.

"I figured if they weren't letting you out to enjoy the party," Kazuma said, "I could at least bring some of it to you."

"Oh, the Count told Dr. Sakuraiji she was more than welcome to go downstairs and mingle," said Nonomiya, "but we all thought it best if we . . . well . . ."

She glanced uncertainly in Ukyou's direction, so Ukyou finished for her: "I think my presence here has caused enough drama already. And I really have no desire to be the center of attention. There's plenty to keep me occupied here," she said, indicating a stack of books she'd chosen from the Count's extensive collection.

"No fun being the only live act at a dead man's party, huh?" Kazuma said with a lopsided smile. "No, I get it." And she plopped herself down on an ottoman, kicking off her heels and scrunching her toes in the rug before tucking into her own slice of cake. "This whole experience has gotta be rough—especially for a woman of science. I mean, Watson alone is something you wish you could unsee. You'd never know it to look at him, but he is an _amazing_ pastry chef!"

Ukyou looked down at her cake, suddenly seeming a bit green. "Shin," Nonomiya warned her.

But Ukyou shook her head. "No, it's okay. It helps to talk about it. I'm still in disbelief, I think. Even after everything I've been through, even after _being there,_ it's hard to swallow the reality of Hell and Meifu. After believing they were nothing but fairy tales or myths for so long."

"If you think that's hard to believe, what would you say if I told you dragons and unicorns were real?"

Nonomiya laughed, which only made Kazuma's grin even wider. "I'm serious!" the latter said. "It's not all doom-and-gloom, you know. There's actually some quite extraordinary stuff out there in the other worlds that I certainly never thought could be real until I died."

"Okay, I'm with you one-hundred-percent on multiverse theory, but dragons? Really?" Ukyou tried to put on a skeptical face, but a childlike grin was doing its best to break through the mask. "I assume we're not talking misconstrued dinosaur bones. You don't mean to tell me there are actually giant reptiles with wings on their backs and magical powers, flying around out there in some parallel dimension?"

"Yup! Fire-breathing and everything."

"You know, scientist in the _real_ world worked it out and determined there's no way fire-breathing dragons could actually exist."

"Of course not. That's 'cause you have to go to the Imaginary World to see them."

"Imaginary World? Now you _must_ be joking." Ukyou narrowed her eyes at Kazuma, unsure whether the shinigami was pulling her leg or being entirely serious. The grin on her face and excited glow in her eyes could have gone either way. But either way, Ukyou was excited by the intellectual challenge Kazuma proposed. At least it would be a pleasant distraction from all her worries about her current predicament. "You've _seen_ a fire-breathing dragon?"

Nonomiya rolled her eyes, but chuckled. "Here we go—"

"Up close and personal," Kazuma said, leaning forward in her seat. "And let me tell you, the proportions of those things will blow your mind."

* * *

Turned out formal work functions were just as tense and awkward in the Land of the Dead as they were among the living. Perhaps Imai should have been more surprised to learn that than he actually was.

There were, of course, the usual slew of coworkers who were thoroughly enjoying themselves, mingling and easily sliding into conversation with anyone they encountered or making copious use of the dance floor. Like the young lady with curly auburn hair who had been attempting to cajole her partner (Imai gathered his name was Hajime, and he looked disturbingly like a younger, taller version of Imai himself) into dancing with her all evening, unsuccessfully. Imai almost felt bad enough for her to want to say something, except that he wasn't the dancing type either.

There were the wallflowers, the folks who were talkative but only really within their own cliques, the flirts who were only worried about whether they left this place alone. And, as always, those who were determined to have a good time, seeing as they were all but required to be here, but needed to consume copious amounts of liquor before they could do so.

Imai was not ashamed to say he fit squarely into this latter category. He knew almost no one here, and Kazuma seemed to have abandoned him to his own devices and disappeared who-knew-where; but seeing as this Count fellow had stocked the open bar with the most expensive selection of booze of any office party Imai had ever been to, Imai was feeling so little pain that if someone broke out a karaoke machine, he would have jumped right in. Not that this was the type of joint to have a spare karaoke machine lying around.

He had another reason for wanting to drown his troubles tonight. Kurosaki fucking Hisoka. Seemed wherever Imai went in this Versailles 2.0 he saw the back of the kid's head, or those creepy green eyes. So far they hadn't made eye contact, but Imai was keeping his eye on Kurosaki, liking the kid less and less with each whisky sour he put away.

It was the way the kid kept to himself, like he thought he was too good for the scene or something. He was just like Imai's coworkers had described: exuding a vibe of negative superiority, spiky as a porcupine, so that no one would wander too close.

But Imai wanted to get close. He wanted to walk up to the kid and give him an earful about what it was like to have your life and your career and everything you thought you knew about the way the universe works suddenly ripped away from you. He wanted to demand to know why he'd had to die that night, to confront Kurosaki about his involvement with Fujisawa and the Livertaker case, and call him out on his lies about said involvement. He wanted to know: Did Kurosaki even feel _sorry_ about what he'd done?

Imai just had to work up the balls to actually do it.

And he was getting really close. Imai could feel it, as he downed what remained of his drink and set the empty glass down hard on a nearby table. All he needed was the right opportunity to present itself.

That was when the world reeled, and Imai felt as if the floor dropped out from under him before he managed to steady himself.

"You okay?" someone said near his shoulder, though they sounded a hundred meters away. "You know, just 'cause you're dead doesn't mean you don't still have to metabolize this stuff—"

"I'm fine," Imai waved them off, bracing himself with hands on knees as he waited for the dizziness to pass. It wasn't a lie. Physically, there was nothing wrong with Imai. Temporally, on the other hand . . .

Kurosaki could wait. He had to find Kazuma and warn her, because he didn't know who else to tell or who else would believe him.

Or who else would help him make sense of what he had just seen. He didn't really understand it himself. All he knew for certain was that some bad shit was coming, and with it came scales and fire and a darkness over the world.

* * *

 **Author note:** _Quoted lyrics are from Falco's "Tango the Night". Ole! Because the first time I heard it, I immediately thought of the Count._

 _The lost da Vinci is a reference to his painting "Battle of Anghiari," rumored to still be hiding behind Vasari's "Battle of Marciano in Val di Chiana" fresco at the Hall of the Five Hundred in Florence, and if you like art history (and horse butts) it's a story worth checking out._

 _The game the Count suggests (who best fits in the box) is the party game the Egyptian god Set came up with to trick his brother Osiris into getting in the coffin he brought so Set could murder him, in the myth of Osiris._


	30. Everybody's fool

Terazuma took a long drag on the cigarette, relishing the flood of nicotine through his system before exhaling into the warm night air.

He could hear the lively polka playing in the ballroom from this balcony, and Yuma cajoling another hapless shinigami into dancing with her, and was thankful to be away from that nonsense, if only for a few minutes. Much as he loved Kannuki and wanted to be able to do anything for her, he didn't see the point in dancing at parties. Dancing was something you did because there was a prize at the end of it, either a trophy or someone in your bed; and since he already had the latter and had no need of the former, the way he saw it, he had no need to dance.

"Think I could bum a cigarette?"

Well, that voice was unexpected. Terazuma turned to see Kazuma approaching his place by the balustrade, a lopsided grin on her lips. She looked more catlike and predatory than he'd seen her before, and knew it wasn't just the slinky dress that hugged her athletic curves and the man-eater hairdo. _Stop it, Hajime. You do_ not _find Kazuma Shin attractive. Think of Kannuki, for crying out loud!_

But it _was_ just a cigarette. "I didn't think you smoked," he said as he tapped one to the top of the pack. "I guess I always figured you for some sort of health nut."

Kazuma sighed, eyes lingering on the cigarette the whole time. "I used to, when I was a teenager and didn't care about leading a long, healthy life. Then one day I got serious about my future and decided to quit, just like that. Never looked back. I guess it didn't matter in the end, though, did it? The cancer-sticks didn't get me, but I died young just the same."

"It's Shungei, isn't it?" Terazuma asked as he lit Kazuma's cigarette. He hadn't intended it, but he supposed there was an unspoken apology in there somewhere.

"Ah," Kazuma affirmed. Exhaling a stream of smoke, she leaned her elbows on the balustrade, not seeming to notice or mind that she looked like she was going to fall out of her dress. And how was it Terazuma had never noticed her resemblance to Shungei before? No, must have been the possession altering her features ever so slightly—

"No one really tells you just how much of a give-and-take this possession thing is," she said absently. "Maybe if they did, no one would ever want to take on a parasitic shiki. I've been finding myself itching to do or say a lot of things lately that I'm pretty sure didn't come from me."

"The rage is the worst." Now that she brought it up, Terazuma saw how his daily existence had changed since he'd been granted his freedom. How easily things rolled off his back that once he would have found unforgivable. "Shikigami experience everything more intensely than humans. It takes a while to get used to it."

"That explains why I've been either tearing up or wanting to punch something for no good reason," Kazuma nodded. "It's been a roller coaster of emotion, for sure. I might have to get back into yoga because of this. But I have to say the worst part is not being able to touch the one person you really want to."

Terazuma couldn't argue with her there.

"You're fortunate in that regard, you know. You and Kannuki can finally be as intimate as you wish."

"Yeah," Terazuma snorted. "That's why she's been off dancing with Tsuzuki half the night and I'm out here on this balcony, pouring my heart out to someone who hates my guts."

Kannuki had looked good, too, in a formal gown of banana-yellow chiffon whose skirts seemed to hang suspended around her when she twirled into Tsuzuki's arms, as if she were dancing on the moon. The last straw had been seeing their sensual rhumba to "This Masquerade." (Or was it a cha-cha? Terazuma only knew a little about the differences from those dancing shows on TV.) After that, he just had to get out of there and lose himself in the warm, nonjudgmental embrace of a cigarette. I'm not going to be jealous, Terazuma had been telling himself all night; but of course he was, and of course he wasn't going to do a damn thing to rectify it.

Kazuma chuckled beside him. "You think I hate your guts, huh?" In the ballroom, a slow waltz started up, and she straightened, pinched out her butt and flicked it into the bushes. "Dance with me, Hajime."

"What?! Uh, for your information, I don't dance. And if I did, don't you think I'd be on the dance floor with Kannuki as we speak? No offense, but just 'cause you snogged me in the library doesn't mean I'm suddenly into you."

"Don't be a dumbass," Kazuma snorted. " _I'm_ not the one who wants to dance with you. _She_ does. And you know she's not going to take no for an answer."

Her newly fiery eyes met his in a hard stare, and Terazuma stood transfixed. For the moment, Kazuma ceased to be and it was Kokushungei standing before him, petulantly expecting him to offer his hand. Yes, Terazuma knew all too well that what Kitty wanted, Kitty got.

But. "You're not going to fursplode on me if I touch you?"

"I don't think it works that way. Besides, she _really_ misses you."

"We never did get to do things like this before, when we were sharing the same body."

Bracing himself for the explosion nonetheless, Terazuma reached for Kazuma's hand and pulled her into his embrace. He felt stupid moving to the music, might have even said so out loud, but Kazuma just laughed. He wasn't her first choice of partner either, that much was obvious, but Terazuma knew from experience that when the Black Lion inside you was at peace, you were at peace. He let Kazuma lean her head against his shoulder, almost putting up his hand to hold back horns that weren't there, and surrendered himself to the rhythm of the waltz and the hot-coal heat of her against his body.

"She wants you to know she's sorry she ever let you go. She didn't mean to, but she's sorry she wasn't strong enough to hold on to the bond you had." And was it Terazuma's imagination, or did he hear tears in Kazuma's voice when she said that?

He didn't think she'd like it if he checked, so he pretended not to notice. "I'm sorry, too. Maybe it's for the best, though. I mean, the two of us were never that compatible to begin with. Not like you two."

That was a loaded observation if Terazuma ever made one. He kicked himself for it as soon as it was out. He didn't know how he would have responded if someone had said the same thing to him when he was newly possessed. So he didn't blame Kazuma for not saying anything for some time.

* * *

"I hope he didn't think I was sticking my nose in where it didn't belong, but even if we've only been partners for half a year, I feel like he ought to at least know I'm looking out for him. I mean, I guess _technically_ we're ex-partners now, so it's not like I have this huge obligation to him anymore, but the guy he's with is _my_ ex-partner, so I do know a little bit about what I'm talking about. And I get it, I really do. Tsuzuki's special. There's just this . . . aura about him, you can't help wanting to help him."

Natsume had hazy but happy memories of helping Tsuzuki figure out how to work the office printer, back in the good-old days of dot-matrix printing and continuous-feed paper reams. (Kids these days were so spoiled by technology.) In that first week, Tsuzuki played the lovable fool with a generous heart, taking Natsume out for sweets and tea to thank him for helping an "old man" adjust to the changing times.

But all that changed when Natsume got himself possessed. Sure, looking back on it now, nearly twenty years later, Natsume would be the first to admit he was careless. But how could he guard against that which he didn't know he was vulnerable to? Ignorance of danger was no excuse in Tsuzuki's mind. Whatever sympathies he may have harbored for his partner dried up. He didn't forgive, and he didn't seem to care who overheard when he argued loudly for Natsume's removal as a shinigami.

"That's where he gets you, though. It's like he just sucks you in with his charisma, so when he turns on you, the second you mess up, you're not prepared for it, you've got no defense for yourself. That's all I'm trying to tell him. Just, you know, guard your heart a little. Don't let him dictate to you how you have to be in order to do your job well. That's just a reasonable piece of advice to give a person who had your back, right? Or was I out of line? Do you think I overstepped?"

The rokurokubi wiping glasses behind the bar just stared at Natsume and answered neutrally: "Would you like another?"

Natsume demurred with a wave, and the youkai bartender's head floated over to a guest who had just sat down at the other end of the bar, connected to his body by a long, snaking neck.

That was when Natsume's phone rang. The Eagles' "Witchy Woman."

"Hello, gorgeous," he answered without thinking. "You know, you're missing one hell of a dead man's party."

He heard Kira hesitate on the other end. "I'm sure. Did you just call me 'gorgeous'?"

Natsume winced. "Too soon?"

"A bit. But I'll let it slide this time. Something more important's come up."

Natsume didn't like her tone. There was something ominous in it. And as much as he would have liked to be on such terms with Tsukiori Kira as to receive social calls from her, he knew that definitely wasn't the case this time.

So he stepped away from the bar, finding a quiet corner where he could hear her better and not be overheard by too many others. "What is it this time? Another demon making and breaking pacts in the Living World?"

"If only it were that simple," Kira sighed. "I'm afraid this time it goes a lot deeper than that. I just wish I had some proof to back up my suspicions with. All I know for sure is that Ashtaroth and her followers are gearing up for something big. I don't know what or when, but I've received enough cagey answers from her most trusted officers that I'm certain it has something to do with Tsuzuki, or Muraki Kazutaka, or both. She's even holding a mortal woman in her custody, who—to make matters worse—appears to be carrying Muraki's child."

"You mean Sakuraiji Ukyou?"

On the other end of the line, Kira paused. "You know of her already?"

Natsume brightened. "We know all about Dr. Sakuraiji! And you'll be glad to hear she's not in Hell anymore. She's here in Meifu, alive and unharmed! One of our Peacekeeping officers who was being held captive over there with her broke her out and brought her here."

"Then it's worse than I thought," Kira said. "Look. Despite whatever she or this Peacekeeper might have told you, I don't think Sakuraiji escaped. One does not simply walk out of Pandemonium. Someone must have let her go."

"But why would any demon do that? Can't be out of the goodness of their heart if they don't have one."

"Then whoever broke Sakuraiji out must have done it with Ashtaroth's knowledge. Maybe even with her consent, or express orders. No one would dare to defy her will when so much is at stake. At least, no demon who expected to live very long afterwards."

"But Ashtaroth wants that baby like nobody's business. That's her babe with the power. If she let Sakuraiji go, then . . ." Then it hit him. Like a bucket of ice over the head. "Oh. Oh shit."

"Indeed. You've got to warn Peacekeeping that they need to beef up security in preparation for an attack."

"Uh, that's going to be a hard sell." Natsume rubbed the back of his neck, even if Kira couldn't see the gesture. "I'm afraid Peacekeeping is none too happy with me right now, after that little fiasco with Zepar in the library with the candlestick. And a few other things I've done in the meantime, now that I think about it. They aren't going to want to listen to me if I say it's a fine day, let alone that the King of Hell is planning something as stupid as attacking Enma-cho!"

"Well, you're just going to have to find a way to make them listen, aren't you?"

* * *

Keijou stood at the door of the Hall of Candles, knowing he was not supposed to be here alone, that he should not have stayed behind when the tour group moved on. The Count would be displeased if he found Keijou lingering here. But Keijou _was_ one of Dr. Sakuraiji's appointed guardians, his presence in this mansion a matter of national security. What could the Count do, other than issue Keijou some harsh words and a slap on the wrist?

Once here, it was difficult to step away again. The glow of the candles mesmerized. The sheer number of them, overwhelming for the mind that tried to grasp the multitude. So many lives dancing like tiny stars on their wicks. So fragile, so easily snuffed out—

 _Stop it. You would never think that. That's an evil thought._

In his mind, he could hear laughter. But it was not so clear whether it was his own. Surely he would not laugh at the thought of innocent lives extinguished beneath his hand.

"You're an agent of death." The words just seemed to fall from his lips, in Keijou's own voice. He shook his head. Why had he said that? But he couldn't stop them, as though they were being pulled from him, extracted from him. "It's only natural you feel this urge. To _take—_ "

Keijou clamped a hand over his own mouth, and to his relief, the words stopped. At least there was no one to hear him. Everyone else was too busy enjoying themselves at the party.

He should have been enjoying himself, too. After tonight, he should have been one step closer to his goal of avenging his partner's demise. Instead, he found himself anxious and bitter. And restless. Tsuzuki was here, under the same roof as Ukyou. And now he had all the Count's most prized possessions, objects of enormous power, practicallyat his fingertips.

He had to get out of this room before he did something he regretted, something that went against all his vows. But the candles called to him, teasing him to just reach out, just pinch out _one flame_ , as if speaking to him through the devil's susurrant tide of breath at his ear—

 _No. This can't be happening._

 _ **But it would explain everything in one neat little package**_ , said the voice inside his mind. His own voice, but warped, clouded, like his reflection in the fogged mirror. _**Did you really think you could fool yourself that you were immune? We had a tit-for-tat, remember? Quid pro quo, Mr. Keijou?**_

A memory of the kiss he shared with Focalor surged to the fore of his mind, as though he were being forced to remember something he had begun to think was just a bad dream. The foul taste of the devil's tongue had Keijou doubling over, almost retching. Just recalling it, he could feel it slithering down the back of his throat—

 _It wasn't his tongue, you idiot!_ And Keijou had walked himself right into Focalor's trap.

He wanted to vomit then, but knew it wouldn't do any good. It was too late. Had been the moment he stupidly agreed to do the devil his one, little favor. Keijou should have known. He _must_ have known what was happening, in the back of his mind, he'd just kept telling himself that nothing was wrong—

 _ **I can see now why Sargatanas was willing to risk all for a shinigami body. Anything would beat wasting away in that rotting corpse. But this! This endless energy—like a perpetual motion machine. . . . With this vessel, and my powers, I feel as though I could do anything! Even achieve my vengeance on Tsuzuki, at long last.**_

Keijou couldn't help himself. The devil's hatred of Tsuzuki was so much greater than his own, he reveled in it, felt drunk on it. Consciously, he knew he didn't have reason to hate Tsuzuki this much, not even for Agrippina's demise. But he didn't care. This hate was intoxicating. It fueled him. It touched him like a cruel lover and made him want to do anything to have more, even fall to his knees and swear anything.

But relinquish control of his own body? No, he was still a servant of King Enma, a Peacekeeper. He couldn't—

He found his hand going to his sidearm, raising it before him. Down the sight, a single candle, its flame flickering in blithe unawareness that its fate was in Keijou's hand, in the twitch of his finger on the trigger.

"Wait!" he hissed. "Don't do this!" The shinigami part of him dug in its heels, as best it could. This was blasphemy. It was murder. He would be put on trial, publicly condemned, obliterated—no, more likely sent back to Hell, as a mortal soul this time, with specific instructions for his eternal torment.

 _ **Only if you're caught. But these walls are thick. No one will hear the gunshot. No one will ever know it was you.**_

" _It's a life!_ Please don't make me—"

 _ **My, so principled all of a sudden. . . . Well, then. You know what to do, don't you?**_

In the end, it wasn't a choice Keijou made consciously, or even out loud. Clearly resisting was vanity anyway. It would only bring more pain, either for him or someone who didn't deserve it.

When he felt the force that gripped his body release, he almost dropped the pistol in relief. But as he replaced it in its holster, he hated himself for giving in, even if he had only chosen what he believed to be the lesser of all evils. Even the promise of seeing his revenge concluded could only dull the guilt and fear so much, like a drug whose effects he had already become inured to.

Keijou spun for the door, before the devil inside could use those candles to his advantage again. "If we're going to do this right, there's no sense being in a rush. And no more mortals get hurt. Least of all Sakuraiji."

 _ **I wouldn't dream of it**_ _,_ Focalor purred.

In the meantime, Keijou would return to her side, to check that nothing had happened to her since he took this break. He wasn't sure how long he would be allowed to remain in control of his own body.

* * *

Hisoka wasn't sure how long he would remain in control of his own body.

The ginger ale that was supposed to calm his stomach so far seemed to be having the opposite effect. Though, to be fair, Hisoka's problem wasn't physical. Not entirely. The slithering feeling inside may have dulled, but the pressure was still there. Like a change in altitude when his eardrums refused to pop. Or a lingering dread like there was something important he had forgotten to do. He felt clammy and wasn't sure what, if he threw up, would come out: the little bit of food he'd eaten at this party, or the yatonokami.

The music and the crowds weren't helping one bit, either. They blurred together and spun round and round in his mind, making it hard to focus. Occasionally Hisoka thought someone was talking to him, but he'd whip his head around and discover it was two people talking to one another across the room. Was he starting to hallucinate? Did it even qualify as an hallucination when the voice inside your head was very real?

 _This is only going to get worse. You've got to see that now. The more you try to tamp this thing down—_

Shit. Was that his own thought or the snake's? He couldn't even tell anymore!

But he felt the truth of it. That the more he tried to resist, to deny what he carried inside him and bury it deeper, the more conscious he was of its power, its hunger, its demands. They just kept floating back to the surface. How long could he keep himself under control?

 _You only have yourself to blame for your suffering. But you hold the power to end it in your own hand. You could feel so much better. Like a whole new man. You know what you have to do—_

A hand landed heavy on his shoulder, and Hisoka spun beneath it, for a split second terrified that it too was a product of his paranoid imagination.

"Watari." He breathed a huge sigh of relief, heart still hammering away. "You scared me half to death."

"Yeah. Likewise, Bon. That was quite a jump there." His concern was clear in his eyes, just as it had been in his touch.

Behind him, Tatsumi was studying Hisoka through his glasses, and Hisoka had the strangest feeling that the secretary was trying to peer _inside_ him, to the shadows of his soul.

"You okay?" Watari was saying. "You don't look so hot. And I don't mean in your usual can't-stand-crowded-places sort of way. I coulda sworn I saw you over here by yourself, giving yourself what looked like a pep talk."

Great, Hisoka thought. Now he _looked_ like an insane person, too. Because he had no doubt that what Watari saw was correct, though Hisoka had no memory of doing it. "It's nothing," he said, waving his empty glass.

Which Watari snatched out of his hand with no resistance. "Bon, have you been _drinking_?"

Did he even need to ask? Didn't they know how much Hisoka hated alcohol? "It's just ginger ale. Natsume said it would help my nerves."

Watari gave the glass a sniff. "Right. Ginger ale. Emphasis on the gin. Exactly how many of these have you had?" _Looks like me and Natsume are gonna have to have a nice little chat_ , he projected.

Suddenly Hisoka couldn't speak. Everything caught up with him in an instant in the presence of a soul he could confide in, and, to his immeasurable relief, Watari and Tatsumi hurried him into a private room before he could completely break down in front of the other departments.

"What's wrong?" Watari said gently as he sat Hisoka down. "Are you in pain? Is it the energy of this place? You want me to take you home?"

" _He's calling me,_ " Hisoka managed to grit out.

"Tsuzuki?" said Tatsumi. Doubtless thinking of the connection they shared.

But Hisoka shook his head. "Yato—"

His throat seized in a swallow, as if the snake didn't want him to say its name. But what he did say was enough. Watari glanced back over his shoulder, and he and Tatsumi exchanged a look of silent alarm. "When did this start happening?"

"A couple weeks ago, I guess?" Hisoka wiped his cheeks, and was surprised to find them wet. "Ever since I got back from Gensoukai. But it's gotten much worse since Tsuzuki's been back."

"You think he has something to do with it?" Tatsumi said.

"No." Of that much, Hisoka was certain. His empathy and feelings for Tsuzuki might have exacerbated things a little bit, but "It's me. It's entirely me. Ever since I summoned him in the Imaginary World—"

"Wait a minute, you did _what?_ " Watari's eyes flew wide. "What do you mean, you _summoned_ it? Like a shikigami?"

"I allowed him to come through and share my body." And couldn't they see that Hisoka didn't need their judgment right now? Couldn't they at least _try_ to keep their thoughts of reprimand to themselves? "It was only temporarily. I needed Yatonokami's power to help me with Kurikara. I didn't think I would survive the fight otherwise."

"You mean you allowed it to possess you," Watari said.

"Why didn't you tell us this before?" said Tatsumi.

"Bon, what were thinking! I mean, obviously you were up against a dragon—but I'm talkin' 'bout after! Didn't you know you were setting a dangerous precedent? Did you even consider it might be irreversible?"

Hisoka would have been lying if he said that hadn't occurred to him at that time. He'd thought about it extensively the morning before he confronted Kurikara. Rikugou had ultimately convinced him it was his best option for success, but Hisoka still bore full responsibility for trusting in his logic.

"Of course I thought about it," he said. "I did what I thought was best at the time. It was my soul, my choice."

"Perhaps," said Tatsumi, "but that choice affects all of us. If you can't control it—"

"But I thought if I worked _with_ Yatonokami instead of _against_ it, I would be better able to control it! That's what _should_ have happened. Now it's had a taste of freedom and it wants out. I can feel it pressing on me constantly, like I'm going to . . ."

"Explode" was what he had been about to say, but his gorge rose instead, and Watari, in his quick thinking, managed to get a china vase into Hisoka's lap just in time. No doubt it was an antique. The Count wasn't going to be happy when he found out about this.

Watari, however, looked a little relieved. "That's just the alcohol," he assured the other two, patting Hisoka's knee. "You should start to feel a little better now."

"You should have told us about this," Tatsumi said, clearly meaning Yatonokami's possession. "We could have helped you—"

"And done what?" Hisoka sobbed. "I'm stuck with this monster no matter what I say or who knows it! You can't exorcise it because it's a part of me. There's never been a time when it _wasn't_ a part of me. And now I'm afraid if I give it even the tiniest bit of control I'm going to lose my body to this thing, and be shut up in my own mind like it was shut up inside me all these years. That's what it wants. For us to switch places—"

He couldn't trust himself to speak anymore. Just voicing that fear brought the very real possibility of it down hard, and his body started trembling and there was nothing he could do about it. He curled up, his fingers tight in his own hair, just willing the nightmare to go away and knowing it wouldn't.

Watari must have thought he was crying. He withdrew his hand from Hisoka's knee, and set the vase aside on a table. Even so, Hisoka could feel his helplessness, and his pity. Watari hated it when he could find no solutions to a problem.

"Kurosaki," Tatsumi tread cautiously, "I know this isn't a good time, but we need your help with a small matter."

Hisoka nodded his assent but didn't look up. Maybe if he could get his mind on something other than his own personal hell . . .

"Tsuzuki seems to have . . . well, disappeared. Wandered off, I should say. No one's seen him leave the Castle, but Peacekeeping is anxious that he isn't accounted for, which means Chief Konoe is anxious—"

"Which of course makes the Count _very_ anxious."

"What about Wakaba? She was dancing with him last." Hisoka didn't mean for that to sound so resentful. It was just that each word felt like a chore to get out.

Watari exchanged a quick glance with Tatsumi. "We already asked. She hasn't seen him since he said he needed a break and wandered back in the direction of the buffet. No one's seen him at the buffet either."

"We thought you might be able to use your connection to locate him. Just to set our minds at ease that he's not causing trouble. If you're feeling up to it, that is."

* * *

Tsuzuki was lost.

He might not have admitted it out loud, but there it was. He thought when he started out on this little adventure that he remembered the layout for this part of the Castle, but now that he was here, none of the rooms looked familiar.

He stopped to mentally retrace his steps. He was _pretty_ sure this wasn't the enchanted part of the Castle, but it was entirely possible the Count had redecorated since the last time Tsuzuki had been in these halls, or that his memory was faulty. The low gaslight in the wall sconces wasn't helping his sense of navigation any, either. Either way, he had let old habits get the best of him and had probably drunk too much for this.

Maybe he should just forget all this and head back to the party. According to the Count, the Kiseki wasn't here. And it would have been foolish of Enma to allow the book to be kept under the same roof as the candles of the living. The real thing was probably somewhere within the offices of the Judgment Bureau. Most likely close to the throne, where no unauthorized personnel was going anywhere near it.

Tsuzuki's hopes sank at the thought. Even if he somehow managed to get close, Peacekeeping wouldn't rest from persecuting him until he had a minder much less generous than Hisoka. He was certain that Todoroki, at least, would prefer to see Tsuzuki on a _physical_ short leash rather than just a metaphysical one.

And yet, _he needed to get to that book_. He couldn't explain why he wanted it so badly, not even to himself, but he wanted it just the same. Wasn't even sure he wanted to use it, just knew he had to have it in his hands, in his possession. He wouldn't feel any peace until he did.

Well, if the Kiseki wasn't here, there was no use continuing to look for it. Tsuzuki was about to return to the party—when he heard footsteps approaching down the empty hallway. _Crap!_ If it was Watson or one of his coworkers, Tsuzuki could probably deal with it, BS his way out, but if it was anyone in a Peacekeeping great coat. . . .

And speaking of coats, damn but Tsuzuki was getting hot in his wool tuxedo jacket. Normally by this point in the party he would have ditched it. But the sweat tickling his back was the least of his concerns, now that he was moments from being caught out where he had no right being. Tsuzuki held his breath, waiting for the person to reveal themselves. But the footsteps stopped. All he heard was the pounding of his own blood—

"My dear Tsuzuki, what on earth are you doing up here?"

Naturally, of all the people to run into up here—alone—Tsuzuki had to run into the Count. He resisted the instinctual urge to spin around at the sound of that voice behind him. It would only have made him seem guilty. He was confident he could play his way out of this one, if he just kept his wits about him.

When he turned, it was with the most innocent and embarrassed grin he could muster. "Count! Boy, am I glad to see you. Sorry to wander off from the party. I was just enjoying a glass of good-old hospitality and thinking, I seem to recall the Count having some more excellent ports than this in his collection, he must be holding out on us. So I figured—really stupidly, now that I say all this out loud—that I'd go down to the wine cellar and help myself—"

"Tsuzuki. My wine cellar is in the basement."

"Yeah. I know that. Where else would a cellar be?"

"Then what are you doing on the second floor, wandering about my personal offices?"

The Count pressed the back of his gloved hand to Tsuzuki's forehead. Not that the problem wasn't painfully obvious just from looking at Tsuzuki, or being close enough to smell his breath. "You _have_ been enjoying my hospitality. A little too much, it seems."

"I'm fine," Tsuzuki insisted. With a shake of his head that, despite his protestations, was a really bad idea in hindsight. The hallway tilted, and he staggered to catch himself—which only helped to sell his innocence. "I can more than handle myself—"

"Yes, you seem to have a certain _way_ of handling yourself at my parties. Usually involving a pile of your clothes on my ballroom floor by the end of the night?" Tsuzuki could hear the Count's grin, even if he couldn't see it. He was at least sober enough to tell the man was getting a laugh out of this. "You must be pretty deep into your cups if you can't even tell your upstairs from your downstairs, though. Honestly, you'd think I would know better by now and ban you entirely from the champagne. It goes straight to your . . . Well, I was going to say head, but that always seems to be the most adversely affected organ, doesn't it?

"But you're absolutely right about the port. Quite astute of you," the Count said with a touch of pride. "Mr. Tatsumi may be a man who can _identify_ a fine vintage when he tastes it, but the way he goes through the stuff like it was water, I must say, strictly between the two of us, I often feel as though I'm being taken advantage of."

He neglected to mention, of course, that Tsuzuki was an even worse offender. "No, I think you have him just about pegged."

"What do you say we go down to the cellar together and treat ourselves, hm?" So saying, the Count put one invisible arm around Tsuzuki's waist. The better to support him, of course. "Just one glass of port each. Maybe two, in honor of Mr. Tatsumi. But we mustn't take too long at it," he added with a lascivious chuckle, "or someone might send a search party after us."

He made to go in that direction, but was taken aback when Tsuzuki planted his feet and stayed stubbornly where he was. "Well? Aren't you coming?"

"Actually, Count, I thought maybe we could stay right where we are."

He could feel the weight of the Count's stare through that half-mask, trying to figure Tsuzuki out. "Why don't we find somewhere you can sit down, get you off your feet." He even seemed to laugh, just a little. As though something Tsuzuki had done or said was new to him, unnerving to him.

At the Count's confusion, something cruel seized hold of Tsuzuki, and he pushed the other up against one of the decorative tables that lined the hallway. The Count may have been invisible, but the mask could not disguise the mass of his body from Tsuzuki's touch. Tsuzuki could feel the plushness of a tuxedo beneath his fingers, and a formal starched shirtfront like what men often wore to the dance halls of his lifetime, stretched across a toned, middle-aged frame. It was a bit strange, to know that he had a solid body under his hands, but in the mirror mounted on the wall behind the Count, Tsuzuki could see only empty air in front of himself.

That, and the hollow back side of the Count's mask.

"Tsuzuki, what are you doing?" The humor had all but left the Count's voice, in its place a warning.

One Tsuzuki ignored. "Oh, I don't know," he said while he traced invisible lapels between his thumbs and forefingers, fascinated that the tips never touched. "I guess I was just thinking about what you're always saying, about how I never pay you back for all the loans you've given me over the years. And I thought maybe . . . maybe I could begin paying them back tonight."

He felt the Count's breath quicken under his hands, knew the man knew exactly what Tsuzuki meant. Still, he stammered, "Really, Tsuzuki, I don't care about the money. Look around you. Do you think it will hurt me if I'm never reimbursed? Call it a gift rather than a loan."

But Tsuzuki shook his head. "No, a deal's a deal. I said I'd pay you back, and since you said, if I had nothing else, I could pay with my body—"

"It was a joke!" The Count forced a laugh. "I wasn't really suggesting that you should prostitute yourself!"

Sure, a joke. Tsuzuki could feel, pressing against his hip, just how much of a joke it actually was to the Count. And he took some courage from that. "You sure seem like you mean it," he said, dropping his voice to a murmur as he leaned into that invisible, but very solid, eager body. "I feel the way you watch me, thinking that because you're invisible behind that mask I won't know what you're really thinking. What you really want—"

"Tsuzuki, that's enough." The Count grabbed his jacket in both hands, tried to break out of his hold.

But Tsuzuki wouldn't let him. He circled both arms around the Count's waist and locked his hands together, refusing to let go. The Count could squirm in his hold all he wanted, could claim with all the sincerity he could muster that he wasn't into this, but the more they struggled against one another, the more his body betrayed him and proved Tsuzuki's point.

How could the Count possibly retreat and claim it was all a game now, after decades of innuendo and confessions of affection? Tsuzuki knew better. He'd been around enough men like the Count to know when the weight of a hand or a joke was not merely play but expressed genuine desire. And it was a rush, to know that in being desired, he wielded such power over another. If a heartfelt look and a plea was enough to convince the Count to give him money, what could Tsuzuki get him to promise for a night in his bed?

Not that Tsuzuki intended to go that far. For the supposed second-most-powerful man in Enma-cho, the Count was an easy mark to play after Muraki. "How can you say 'enough,'" Tsuzuki asked him, "when I'm offering you exactly what you've always wanted?"

Whatever protestations the Count may have been about to give, they were thrown to the wind when he crushed his mouth to Tsuzuki's. His gloved hands slid up Tsuzuki's back, grasping at his shoulder blades, desperate to hold him close.

But Tsuzuki wasn't going anywhere. He leaned into the kiss, returning urgency with patient exploration. He wasn't sure what he had expected to find, but the lips that kneaded his were flesh and blood, with breath behind them, breath that tasted of sweet wine. The hair Tsuzuki ran his fingers through was cut and styled much like his own. His thumb brushed across an ear that wasn't pointed or otherwise grotesquely shaped, but was indistinguishable from a normal human ear. He might have been a demon, but the Count felt just as human as Tsuzuki did, with no obvious deformities to hide from the public. So why the mask?

Tsuzuki could contain his curiosity no longer. For so long he had ached to see what was under that mask, to know what this eternal secrecy was all about. It only took a gentle tug and the mask came away from the Count's skin, deceptively light in Tsuzuki's hand.

Suddenly visible, the Count gasped and let go of Tsuzuki, raising his hands to his own face. But in vain. Tsuzuki had already seen enough.

His feeling of triumph died the moment Tsuzuki saw the Count for what he really was, and turned to incredulous defeat inside him. As if some sadistic god had reached down and rent him in two with a touch and he hadn't yet realized it, Tsuzuki could only stare at the impossible visage in front of him. Wishing to God his eyes were playing tricks on him, but knowing that they weren't. Fate _had_ to be this cruel. "It's . . . it was . . . _you?_ All this time. . . ."

The Count still covered the side of his face where the mask had been, but it did him no good. "Tsuzuki," he choked while, with the other hand, he reached for Tsuzuki. "Give me the mask."

As if those words broke a spell, Tsuzuki remembered how to move then. He recoiled from the Count's reach, and not only because he could not give the mask back once he had taken it.

He had to get away from that face. That handsome, disgustingly familiar face.

He barely heard the Count calling for him to wait, begging to be given a chance to explain. He hardly noticed the stairs as he flew down them two and three at a time, somehow in his desperation to escape managing not to trip and tumble down the whole flight. He could already feel tears of shame burning behind his eyes, emotion or bile or both rising in his throat, but he had to get out of this godforsaken Castle first, before he could begin to allow himself to stop and think about what he knew he would never—no matter how much he wished it—be able to forget.

* * *

Hisoka wasn't sure what had just happened between Wakaba and Terazuma, but the former was pissed _._ And leaving in a hurry, swinging her shrug violently beside her. Terazuma walked fast to keep up, insisting all the while that something wasn't what it looked like and also didn't mean anything. "If you would just stop for a minute and let me _explain—_ Kannuki!"

Was it wrong that Hisoka felt a little bit better knowing he wasn't the only one having a shit time at this party?

"Any word yet on Tsuzuki?" Hisoka said as Konoe and Tatsumi wove through the crowd toward him.

"Not yet," said the latter, "but I told the Count what you told me. He said he would take care of it."

Feeling much improved the more he sobered, Hisoka had decided to rejoin the party with the others. Yatonokami had quieted somewhat, as if all Hisoka had needed was to share his worries with another soul, but he could still sense its restlessness beneath his skin. He always would, he supposed. It was just another new reality to get used to.

"Thank you, Kurosaki," said Konoe, saying nothing of what Hisoka had shared with Watari and Tatsumi about his personal problems. Perhaps he still didn't know. "I hope you didn't feel like we were asking you to inform on Tsuzuki. Only, if I didn't assure Todoroki that we had the matter under our control—"

"He might have put the whole Castle on lockdown until Tsuzuki was located?"

Konoe looked at him sideways, as if trying to decide whether his mind had just been read or the Peacekeeping chief was simply that predictable. He cracked a smile.

Though his words were bitter. "I wonder if Todoroki doesn't wish Tsuzuki was still out there somewhere, unaccounted for. He certainly enjoyed being in command. Always did. But he forgets, when he oversteps his bounds like he did when he sent his agents to arrest me, who's really in charge here."

"Enma seems to have no trouble turning a blind eye to his overreach."

"Enma forgets nothing. Neither, for that matter," the chief added pointedly, "does the Count," and it was clear to Hisoka then that that was whom Konoe had been referring to as the one in charge.

"Hey. Kurosaki. You're Kurosaki, ain't ya?"

Hisoka turned at the new voice and saw a man in a business suit with tie sloppily pulled undone coming toward him. Hisoka had seen him around before, he recognized the man as a new recruit in the Peacekeeping department, but other than the fact that the man looked enough like Terazuma to be his older brother, the face wasn't ringing any bells.

He was obviously shitfaced, though, and after everything he had already been through tonight, Hisoka didn't think he needed this to top it all off. "Can I help you?"

"You don't recognize me, do ya?" Imai said. He snorted, and it turned into a snarl. "'Course you don't. You intentionally withheld critical information from a police investigation, so why would you recognize the guy you _killed—_ "

"Wait, what investigation?"

"Kumamoto, last fall? The fuckin' _Livertaker murders_? Shit, you really don't remember, do you, kid?"

It came back to Hisoka all in a rush. So much had happened since that case, he thought he could be forgiven for forgetting a mortal detective who had interviewed him once while he was undercover. Though the dead detective's outrage told him otherwise. It was an egregious enough offense that Hisoka had lied to him and thereby obstructed justice. Hisoka didn't think the detective would buy his explanation that Hisoka had to do it in order to keep his shinigami identity secret.

"I remember," he said. "But what are you doing here?"

"I'm _dead_ , asshole! Isn't that obvious? I'll give you one guess as to who's responsible."

God, the guy was projecting like crazy. Hisoka remembered being angry and scared over his own death when he was new to the Judgment Bureau; but feeling that intense rage from someone else, while being the target of it at the same time, was a different experience. Added to which, the horror of Rikugou's explosion, the inferno zooming toward him with no time to run, no time to hide or even think about anything but imminent death—

"That's right," Imai nodded when he saw the understanding come over Hisoka's features. "You summoned that bird that went off like a nuclear fucking bomb, and it wiped me and half a city block full of innocent people out in an instant! I bet you never even stopped to think about the lives you were destroying that night, did you?"

 _How can he say that? Of course I thought of them!_ But could Hisoka really say he felt weighed down by the guilt of their deaths? "It was an accident. I never meant to—"

"Which just makes it all the worse, doesn't it? You bit off more than you could chew, unleashed something you knew damn well you couldn't control, and I was left paying the price for it! I had a partner," Imai growled through his teeth, "a family, a career—a _life—_ and you took that away from me, you stuck-up piece of shit—"

That was enough to convince Konoe and Tatsumi, who had been listening from the sidelines, to step between Imai and Hisoka before the former resorted to fisticuffs.

But he was right. Hisoka couldn't deny that he was absolutely right. He deserved every epithet the detective could throw at him. He should have felt more guilty than he did for what he had done; this condemnation was a just start.

"Hey! What the hell is going on here?" Kazuma shouted as she ran toward the commotion. She broke Imai away from Tatsumi's grasp and shook him hard herself. "I leave you alone for a little bit and you go and confront the person responsible for your death? You don't just _do_ that!"

Thankfully, she was precisely who Imai had been wanting to see, and his beef with Hisoka was just as quickly set aside. "Sempai, thank god! Where were you? I saw something, I wanted to tell you right away—"

"Another premonition?" Kazuma sounded alarmed, but Imai assured her, "It hasn't come true yet."

 _Premonition? Another one? What's this all about?_ But a sudden commotion at the top of the stairs grabbed their attention before any more could be said about it.

Hisoka felt even before he saw Tsuzuki coming down. Pushing his way through the crowd, he went to intercept his partner and ask him just where he had been all this time.

But the look of utter distress on Tsuzuki's face, even more than the wave of jumbled emotion surrounding him, stopped Hisoka dead. Tsuzuki wouldn't look at anyone around him as he flew down the last flight of steps and straight toward the exit. But he was aware of the attention he'd grabbed. _Don't look at me—stop looking at me like that! As if you were all so much better than me. . . . I wish I could just disappear. This can't be happening, it can't. . . ._

Before Tsuzuki barged through the front doors and out into the night, Hisoka saw him wipe his cheek on his tuxedo's sleeve. He'd been crying. And for that reason alone, Hisoka knew he should go after him. Bad things happened when Tsuzuki was left all alone in that state.

"Tsuzuki, wait!"

All eyes turned to the man who rushed to the mezzanine of the grand staircase and, seeing his quarry had already escaped him, froze in his tracks. In an immaculate tuxedo, complete with white kid gloves and a medallion at the hollow his throat, he was clearly a guest of the party, not to mention a striking individual of enormous presence. But Hisoka was sure he hadn't seen the man about Enma-cho before. Perhaps in his mid-forties, with an aristocratic poise and noble lines to his face, and the crimson-purple eyes of a demon.

When he saw he had the entire party's attention, the man compulsively raised a hand to cover one side of his face. Hisoka could feel the stunned silence fall over the room, like a sudden change in pressure, the moment it dawned on the other guests they were looking at their host, the Count, as he truly was, for the first time.

"Get out," he growled at the crowd, like a wounded and cornered animal.

But everyone was too stunned to move.

" _GET OUT!"_

The gas lamps flickered and dimmed, as if they too wanted to obey his order; and for a second, something of the demonic nature within came through the Count's aristocratic features. His anger was like a pulse of negative energy through the ballroom, and it was warning enough to make everyone suddenly quite eager to leave the building.

But it was the shame it carried with it that caught Hisoka's attention, in the moment just before the Count swept back out of the room, covering his face, a troubled Watson hurrying to catch up.

"I guess this party is over," Konoe sighed.

"Someone should go after him," Tatsumi said, meaning Tsuzuki. "I don't know what that was about, but it couldn't have been good. We cannot let Tsuzuki vanish again—"

"Leave it to me," Hisoka said. He didn't need Tatsumi to finish that thought. He knew Todoroki and his agents would be only too willing to institute another manhunt.

"You know where he's going?" said Konoe.

Hisoka didn't exactly, but "I can feel him." And he held up his wrist for illustration, upon which the lines of their connection glowed silver-blue. "I'll catch up and stay with him, make sure he can't get into any more trouble."

"Maybe you could find out what in the world he's just done while you're at it. I've never seen the Count so angry. Hell, I've never seen the Count at all." By the sound of it, Konoe was still having trouble believing he just had.

"Are you sure you don't want company?" Tatsumi asked, probably thinking of Hisoka's own emotional breakdown earlier that night.

But Hisoka shook his head. "Tsuzuki might be more willing to confide in me if I'm by myself. Right, Chief? Besides, we've known each other this long and we're still partners. I can handle his moods."

"Keep me informed," Konoe said. "The last thing Tsuzuki needs is Todoroki thinking he's gone rogue again and sending his whole department out to search for him. I should have warned the Count this party was a bad idea. It's just too damn much too damn soon."

* * *

The bond between them led Hisoka back to his own apartment. But when he arrived and turned on the light, he found the place empty.

Which was odd. From everything he had been told, it should have been next to impossible for the spell that bound him to Tsuzuki to be tricked or tampered with. Maybe Hisoka just hadn't interpreted the signal right. Or maybe Tsuzuki _had_ come to his apartment, but promptly teleported somewhere else that just hadn't caught up to Hisoka yet.

He went to the kitchen sink to get a drink of water and try to clear his head, when a sound like a small animal moving around got his attention. _I'm pretty sure I don't have rats. . . ._

When he turned to face the living area, he started, because there was Tsuzuki, sitting on the floor slumped against the sofa, in his crumpled tuxedo, as though he had been there the whole time. He must have been. Hisoka would have heard, or at very least felt, anyone entering after him. So the binding spell hadn't lied; but why hadn't he _seen_ Tsuzuki until now?

Then he caught the look on Tsuzuki's face, the familiar despair, the silent desperation. Hisoka wanted to reach out, to put his arms around Tsuzuki and comfort him like his partner would have done for him in a heartbeat if their situations were reversed.

But he stopped himself. "What are you doing here?" The question came out barely more than a whisper. Something wasn't right. With Tsuzuki—with any of this. Hisoka just couldn't say what. "You just let yourself in?"

"I'm sorry, Hisoka." Hisoka's heart broke to hear the self-loathing in Tsuzuki's voice. Back again—but then it never truly left. "I didn't know where else to go. I didn't think anyone else would understand."

Now he regretted being so harsh. "It's okay. We were all worried for a second that you might have run away on us again. I'd much rather find you here. Even though a heads-up that you were coming over would have been nice."

He pulled out his phone and started typing, which earned him a worried sound from Tsuzuki. "I'm just letting the chief know I found you and you're safe," Hisoka explained.

"Please don't tell him where I am."

"He doesn't need to know that. At least not yet."

Tsuzuki let out a breath of relief, albeit a ragged one. "I thought about running away again. But it's not like there's anywhere I can go now. And besides, you'd just find me again and I'd be in even more trouble than I am already. I knew everyone would want to know what that commotion back at the Castle was all about, I just . . . couldn't bear to face any of you right then. You know how that is, don't you?"

It was his eyes that finally pulled Hisoka to his side, when he raised them. Shining and red-rimmed with tears shed until he had run out.

"Tsuzuki, what did happen back there?" Hisoka said as he knelt down beside him. His senses screamed at him that this was a delicate situation, he should tread accordingly, but he had to know. "You ran out of there like you'd just been given the worst news of your life. And when the Count came out after you, he wasn't hiding his face from us. I could feel his anger, it was so strong, and . . . his hurt, like you'd betrayed him. . . ."

Tsuzuki wouldn't face him, instead staring into some memory inside himself that Hisoka, despite their bond and all his mental prying, wasn't privy to.

And it worried him. It made him think he was going to lose Tsuzuki all over again. The one time Hisoka _wanted_ to feel what Tsuzuki was feeling, and of course his partner was a blank wall to him.

Hisoka swallowed down his own fear, pressed on, gentler, though he suspected he already knew: "If the Count did something to you, I'll never forgive him. I don't care if he is some powerful demon or the second-most-important guy in Enma-cho, I'll file a formal complaint on him. Get Watari to spike his Darjeeling or something." Neither one had the stomach for humor at that moment, though, and Hisoka could have kicked himself for trying to lighten a mood he had no right to lighten. He just felt so impotent at that moment, and hated it. "I just can't stand it when you let him harass you—"

Then Tsuzuki opened his hands and Hisoka saw the Count's mask staring back up at him. He half-expected to hear the Count's voice suddenly issuing from it. It seemed so surreal, for it to just sit there like an inanimate thing. A cracked remnant of something already long broken, yet radiating powerful magic even as it rested in Tsuzuki's palm.

There had to be a reason the Count was so protective of the mask. It couldn't be just for the anonymity it provided him. It must be a relic of enormous importance. And what did Tsuzuki go and do so soon after coming back to Meifu, knowing he was on probation, but pull a stunt as blasphemous as this. "Tsuzuki, what have you done?"

"It's my inheritance, Hisoka."

"What?" But even as the question was out of his mouth, he knew what Tsuzuki meant. Just didn't want to believe it—couldn't let it sink in, couldn't let it be true—

"You think I stole it," Tsuzuki said, "and that I'm going to be punished severely for that sin. But is it a sin—is it _really_ stealing, if this mask was always meant to come to me eventually? If you think about it, I'm just claiming it sooner rather than later."

Tsuzuki turned it in his hand as though he were examining some long-forgotten artifact from his childhood. "I know why Enma chose me now—"

"No." Hisoka didn't want to hear it. As if that could stop it from being true. "There's no way you can be sure, unless he actually said—"

"He didn't have to. The second I saw him without the mask—the second I looked in his eyes, and saw they were just like mine, I knew. And he didn't deny it. He couldn't, not without lying, and demons are terrible liars." Tsuzuki's voice grew small, like it was far away: "It was so obvious, Hisoka, funny how obvious it was, really. Like looking in a mirror, if a mirror could show you yourself twenty years older."

He turned to look at Hisoka, and Hisoka couldn't continue to deny it. Those purple eyes . . . He had been surprised to see the Count's were so similar, though he had told himself, desperate to downplay the similarity, that their color was just a mark of a demon, nothing special about it.

"You know, something about the Count has always felt nostalgic to me," Tsuzuki confessed to him. "I could never explain it, it was just a feeling I'd get in his presence. Like being dandled on the knee of someone whose face I could never remember. My mother always said he had eyes like mine. My father, I mean. She never kept any pictures of him around the house. Now I understand why—"

The last words Tsuzuki barely got out before fresh tears welled up, and his face contorted in a pained grimace. Hisoka didn't think then, just reached out and drew Tsuzuki to himself, holding his partner to his chest as the sobs came.

Tsuzuki shook against him. His tears wet the front of Hisoka's shirt, and his arms went around Hisoka's waist, holding tightly on to him. It was another moment before Hisoka realized he was crying as well. The tears poured silently out of him, wetting Tsuzuki's hair beneath his cheek.

Hisoka wouldn't have been able to say for sure whether it was Tsuzuki's emotions soaking into him that moved him, or his own sympathy for Tsuzuki. Probably both. He could imagine how traumatic it must have been, to discover the invisible presence Tsuzuki had worked for the past seventy-five years had been his father all along. And all the Count's cruel jokes and flirting, his inappropriate touching and obsession with Tsuzuki's body, could not have made the revelation any easier. As if it weren't hard enough for a person to understand that they were half demon. Did the relationship between parent and child have to be so twisted, so corrupt, as well? Maybe Hisoka should have counted himself lucky, to have had a father who wanted nothing to do with him.

If anything gave Hisoka strength in that moment, oddly enough it was the knowledge he had of his own conception. _We're alike, you and I_ , he wanted to tell Tsuzuki. _You're not alone. I have a demon in me, too, so I know how this feels._ It wasn't the same, but it wasn't all that different either. Not in any way that mattered. Ever since Kyoto, Hisoka had felt certain he and Tsuzuki had been given to each other as partners for a reason. He'd thought he understood that reason, but he had known only a small part of the whole story.

Only now did he discover the buried truth. No one else could understand what it was like to be part demon, and to come out of it stronger and more human for the knowledge. Enma must have foreseen this. He must have known that they alone were qualified to comfort one another.

So Hisoka didn't shush Tsuzuki, or try in vain to tell him that everything was going to be all right. Tsuzuki had never done the same to him, had never lied to him or downplayed his feelings when he knew it would not help the pain. Hisoka just held on, and let Tsuzuki cry against him, cling to him, and tried the best he could to project a sense that Tsuzuki was not alone. Now wasn't the time for Hisoka to confess the truth about himself; but he could show Tsuzuki that he was loved, no matter what he was or whom he came from. That this pain, too, was something they shared. And Hisoka would gladly take Tsuzuki's share of the burden on to himself if Tsuzuki got tired of carrying it.

He pressed a kiss to the top of Tsuzuki's head, and felt Tsuzuki start to relax in his hold. A sigh instead of a sob against his chest. A squeeze of gratitude. "Thank you, Hisoka."

"I didn't do anything you wouldn't have done for me," Hisoka whispered.

Tsuzuki forced a laugh. "You'd be surprised how few people would be willing to do that, though. For a thing like me."

When he said "thing," Hisoka felt nuances of "trash," "beast," "abomination." A monster that should never have been suffered to live. How to make Tsuzuki understand that none of those was new to Hisoka either? He wanted to wipe the hate of those words from both their souls. "You're my partner," he said. "But more than that, you're my friend. Seeing as I've never had many of those, that isn't a word I use lightly."

Even then, "friend" didn't really cut it. Tatsumi was a friend. The Gushoushin were friends. Even Saya and Yuma, though they drove him nuts, ought to be considered in the same category. Hisoka didn't want to think of Tsuzuki as just a friend anymore. Tsuzuki was . . .

Unique. Dearer than the rest.

Essential. And beloved. Cherished.

Wanted.

Tsuzuki pressed his face into Hisoka's dress shirt, and Hisoka thought of telling him off for wiping his snot on it.

Until he realized that wasn't what Tsuzuki was doing. And it was his mouth that Hisoka felt pressed against his shirt front, Tsuzuki's breath hot against his chest. Tsuzuki's fingers spread out against his back, as though his hands might gather more of Hisoka into themselves by doing so.

When Hisoka realized what he was doing, he froze. This wasn't a dream, not a devil-induced hallucination. This was really happening. Tsuzuki raised his head so he could press his lips to the side of Hisoka's throat, and Hisoka could not delude himself that those were anything other than kisses. What had he done to give Tsuzuki the idea that this was appropriate right now? Or was it the long period of absence that had brought this on? Until this past week, Tsuzuki had been careful not to force his affections on Hisoka. He had always recognized that, because of Hisoka's past, this was a dangerous line to cross.

Now everything had changed. And though anxiety quickened Hisoka's pulse, he couldn't say he didn't want this, so he did nothing and Tsuzuki's mouth moved closer to his.

When they finally met, it was hardly anything like the kiss Hisoka had given him under the cherry tree. A different sort of pleasure warmed his belly, darker and more tangled than that morning. Heady and addicting, and for that precise reason, terrifying. Hisoka's grip on Tsuzuki's jacket tightened, at first to push Tsuzuki away, but then to keep him close. Despite the fear, he wanted more, and wasn't sure if this desire was his own or Tsuzuki's, but it didn't seem to matter. Hisoka had to pull away eventually to catch a breath, however, and he tried to explain, "Tsuzuki, I don't know if I—"

"You've always been so kind to me, Hisoka." Those murmured words cut him off, dragged Hisoka's will down with their depth of feeling. "Even though I don't deserve it. I never tell you how much I appreciate it."

 _Let me show you_ , his mind whispered to Hisoka's. And Hisoka might have shivered at the promise in it, if his stomach wasn't currently doing flip-flops inside him, and if Tsuzuki's hand on the back of his neck didn't feel so much like a restraint. His mouth was on Hisoka's again, but Hisoka couldn't find it in him to protest.

The feelings were overwhelming: the pressure of those lips, the possessiveness of Tsuzuki's hands, his emotions. More than anything else, his emotions. He didn't bother to shield them from Hisoka now, and Hisoka wasn't entirely sure anymore that he didn't _want_ to feel them. He felt like a passenger along for the ride in his own body, a sponge soaking up all Tsuzuki's affection for him, which was anything but professional, or the sort of affection that friends or brothers might feel for one another. There was desire there, carnal but also tender, desperate and frightening and exhilarating all at the same time. How did a person even begin to respond to so much stimuli, coming at him all at once?

In the back of his mind, Hisoka was aware of being lowered to the floor. It didn't seem like he had much of a choice, but he welcomed the press of Tsuzuki's mouth along his jaw and throat, heavy and warm, his partner's hands sliding down his body. Wasn't this what he had wanted, in his guiltiest dreams and in the dark corners of his mind that Zepar had illuminated for him? This wanting had been hiding inside for such a long time, in both of them. Why wait any longer? Why not surrender to it?

Tsuzuki managed to get his hands under Hisoka's shirt, and the drag of his fingertips was shocking against Hisoka's bare skin. His knee between Hisoka's thighs and the dizzying surge of anticipation that came with it left Hisoka gasping for breath. He wanted desperately to enjoy this, like any normal human being with a normal upbringing would. He wanted so much to be able to give himself up to the moment, to the pleasure of the friction, the intoxicating warmth of being desired by someone he loved.

He didn't want the memories to come, at that moment or any other, but they did. Rushing back, all on their own.

Muraki's hands on his bare skin, writing the curses that Tsuzuki's fingers now unconsciously traced. Everything about him an intrusion, a wedge splitting Hisoka apart from himself. His heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. If he didn't stop this now, he didn't know what was going to happen. He could feel it starting again. The prickling under his skin, the slithering in the gut, the pressure building within. The terror of losing control. . . .

"Tsuzuki—wait—" He tried to push himself up, to escape the leg between his own.

But Tsuzuki wouldn't let him. He grabbed Hisoka by his trouser braces, pulled him back down and toward himself. Pushed Hisoka's knees apart. Panic rose inside Hisoka at finding himself again in that familiar, vulnerable position. He could feel Tsuzuki's state of arousal even before his partner pressed against him, ashamed that his own body's reaction wasn't doing much to help his case. "I can't tell you how long I've wanted this," Tsuzuki said, sliding with purpose against Hisoka's erection, jutting into his pelvis. "But you must know that already. The way you've always teased."

"W-what're you talking about?" was all Hisoka could think of to say. He wasn't doing anything—that was the problem!

"Come on, Hisoka. You have to know what you do to me. You're the empath, after all. You can't tell me you didn't _want_ me to feel this way." Tsuzuki's teeth were at his ear, his fingers at the buttons of Hisoka's trousers. "You've been practically throwing yourself at me since I got back." Tsuzuki laughed, a desperate puff of breath against Hisoka's skin. "It's weird, like you're in my head, but I like it. Like it's my first time, all over again."

So Hisoka was projecting, and not even on purpose. A feedback loop, Zepar had called it. But it seemed to Hisoka more like a spiral, looping downward faster than he could ever hope to climb up out of. Desire was magnified until it burned like a furnace, and Hisoka couldn't tell anymore whether these feelings were his own or he was just channeling Tsuzuki's back into him. The pleasure of Tsuzuki's touch only reminded him that Muraki had given him pleasure too, to go with the pain. So that Hisoka couldn't say he was blameless in what happened. More pleasure than he could bear. . . .

Yatonokami was relishing this. Hisoka's heart was in his throat from sensory overload, but the snake within him was expanding, unwinding with anticipation. The sound of Tsuzuki undoing his own fly was different from that night beneath the cherries, and the same. He tugged at Hisoka's trousers hard enough to pop the buttons off the braces until they came down off his hips, and Hisoka was pulled bare-assed down the rug, hoisted into Tsuzuki's lap.

He did fight back then, pushing Tsuzuki away with a strangled "Get off me!" and grabbing for his own pants, struggling to get them back up again. _What are you doing? Don't!_ The protests in Hisoka's head should have been his own, but they weren't. Not entirely. Hisoka couldn't believe it, that to Tsuzuki it was as if Hisoka was the one taking something precious away from _him_. "This is moving too fast, Tsuzu—"

Tsuzuki took Hisoka's wrists in his hands and slammed them back to the floor, pinning him there. It wasn't so much the force of it that shook Hisoka breathless as it was the unquestionable will. The refusal to listen to Hisoka's protest. And the cold distance that came over Tsuzuki's eyes that Hisoka could only describe as inhuman. Monstrous.

"I _need_ this, Hisoka, I need _you,_ " Tsuzuki said through his teeth. How could Hisoka tell him to stop now, everything in him seemed to beg, when he was the one who started this?

 _But I didn't!_ Hisoka wanted to shout back. _At least I didn't mean to._ His wrist burned and he tried to twist it away. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the marks of the binding spell flaring—as well as the scars of his curse beneath it, disappearing up his sleeve. And he could feel the pleasure coiling inside Tsuzuki—not the same pleasure that had started this, but a sadistic joy at Hisoka's discomfort, at his fear, slithering through Tsuzuki's soul like a worm.

Hisoka knew this jealousy, this twisted, spiteful wanting. He had felt it when Tsuzuki was possessed by Sargatanas. Only it didn't belong solely to the devil. Hisoka must have known that all along. That there was something inside Tsuzuki, buried so deep down that it took a possession to bring it back to the surface, that was every bit as evil as Tsuzuki always claimed he was, and Hisoka always denied he was.

This is where Muraki got it, he thought, hating himself for thinking it and hating Tsuzuki that it was true. He really was no different from Muraki. The same sickness festered in them both. Like son, like father. The only difference was, this time Hisoka was dead, and he didn't have to lie there and let the night of the lunar eclipse happen to him all over again.

He teleported out of that place. And when the dark conference room back at the Summons office materialized around him, and the oppressive weight of Tsuzuki's body and spirit were gone, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and wept.

He just prayed the locating spell only worked one way.


	31. Miserere mei

When Muraki was sure the ink was dry, he folded the card and set it next to the generic urn and memorial tablet he had received with Sakaki's effects. If he did not return, Oriya would know what to make of the instructions left on the card. He would do right by Sakaki's memory. Not because Oriya had been particularly fond of Sakaki, but because he was Oriya. It went against his nature to do anything disrespectful or improper. Even if the person affected was no longer in a position to care.

If Muraki had been a different person, he might have felt guilty looking at that small collection of objects. What greater memento mori was there than seeing a long, full life reduced to a handful of bones and ash, a diving watch and glasses? If Muraki did return, he supposed he could process what he ought to be feeling then. He could have a gravestone erected, buy Sakaki the most expensive Buddhist name he could find to ensure his restless spirit never came back. Try to reach out to anyone who might have known Sakaki in the past. Anyone who might have cared that he was dead.

But Muraki did not plan to return.

Oriya would surely curse his name for this. Until the day he died. He loved too much for his own good.

Satisfied that he had done all he could do, Muraki took the watch from the table and trench coat from the back of the chair. He turned off the crystal chandelier over the dining room table for what he expected to be the last time.

In the darkened hallway mirror, he caught his reflection. Black wasn't his color, it always made his pale complexion seem even whiter and more corpse-like; but it was appropriate for a doctor who had seen his last patient. It made him look like an undertaker, or a rook, a carrion bird. A shinigami.

His reflection smiled back, the expression even reaching his ruined eye. The vision in it was starting to fail him for minutes to hours at a time now, but it wouldn't matter for long. When this was over, he would either be a master of death, or dead.

* * *

The cemetery was old, its last gravestones erected before the war. No one came here anymore—at least, not to this corner of it. There was no one left alive to remember those who were interred in this dark grove, and so the names on the markers faded away beneath moss and acid rain.

But the dead remembered.

His brother-in-law had been wrong. Tsuzuki did visit his sister's grave. It was only that he'd never visited alive.

"I messed up again, Ruka." The concrete slab beneath him was rough and dirty and cold, just the bed he deserved to lie in for his betrayal. "It's what I always do, isn't it? Hurt the people who love me?"

A dark, all too familiar thought passed over him like a shadow: _Did_ _they even love me?_ Could a thing like him even be loved at all? He certainly didn't deserve it. It wouldn't have surprised him if they were all pretending.

The blue lines overlapping the scars across his wrist glowed as Tsuzuki traced them idly with his thumb. They would not let him forget what he had done. What he might have done, had Hisoka not escaped when he did. Just knowing that he would have gone all the way if Hisoka couldn't stop him, that he had been ready and willing to subject Hisoka to the same violence and humiliation he'd suffered under Muraki, made Tsuzuki want to hurt himself. Open a vein, pluck out an eye—whatever it took to soothe just a little of the agony of the self-hate he felt inside. Only he knew it wouldn't really help. And that pain was the least of what he deserved.

Whatever made him think that it was a good idea? Pressuring Hisoka into doing what he _should have known,_ given Hisoka's history, was too perilous, too reckless? Could Tsuzuki say he was drunk on lust when he _knew_ , when he could _feel_ Hisoka's fear as clearly as if it were his own? And still he'd tried to take what he had convinced himself was rightly his, telling himself what he thought was fear was really excitement. In the clarity of loneliness, Tsuzuki understood by just how much he had crossed the line—no, obliterated it. But he had really thought—in that moment, he had truly felt that he was wanted. That he was desired. As he was. With no ulterior motive.

Of course it was a lie. It had to be. Hisoka was an empath, after all. Maybe he never truly returned the affection that Tsuzuki felt for him, only reflected it like light on a mirror, blinding Tsuzuki to its true source. _Maybe all that stuff about caring for me because I was his partner was a lie too, and he didn't even know the difference. I tricked him into believing he was my friend. I tricked myself into thinking he could be something more. And because I wanted it,_ _needed_ _it_ _to be true so badly . . ._

"Every time I think I finally have something good, I have to destroy it. I just can't seem to help myself. That's the real reason you left me, isn't it, Ruka?" He could still see that last look on her face, before she turned to flee from him forever. Hisoka had looked at him that same way, just before he teleported away. "You knew I'd eventually do the same to you if you stayed. But it didn't matter. I destroyed you anyway."

Never ill, a perfect carrier for all sorts of diseases. Because he never knew, no one ever knew he might be a walking plague, not even after it was too late.

It didn't seem to matter what the particular sickness was. _He_ was the disease. His soul, toxic, from the very beginning. He killed Ruka just as sure as if he'd plunged a knife into her heart. As sure as he'd just killed whatever semblance of love Hisoka might have had for him in his heart. Somehow that seemed a worse crime than when he'd thought he had wiped Hisoka from existence.

Tsuzuki stroked the stone as he might a bed quilt, one sibling sharing a late-night confession with another. "In a way, I'm glad you and Mother didn't live to see what I became. You would be so ashamed of me, for the things that I've done, and I hurt you both enough as it was. It wasn't your fault. You could never change what I was, no matter how much you tried. No matter how kind you were to me. The monster always won out in the end."

 _But you must have known that. You must have been frightened for your life, every day in that house. Always wondering, Will today be the day he loses control?_

His sister's remains did not answer. They never did. Wherever her soul was now, it was long gone from this place of burnt bones and engraved names.

But Tsuzuki was not alone. And whatever restless spirits still lingered here were quiet, hiding. Not from the shinigami who could have taken them away, but from what stalked him. The black void that blocked out the stars as it loped between the rows of graves, dragging its long skirts of shadow. Circling. Biding its time. Waiting for its chance to come near.

"I just wish with all my heart I could go to where you are."

Whatever oblivion Ruka was in, he wanted nothing more than to be there right now. To feel nothing—no pain, no guilt. No memories of all the suffering he'd caused. Nothing but the comforting embrace of non-being.

"But I know I don't deserve that either."

* * *

"Okay. Out with it. What did you see?" Kazuma said, drawing Imai aside to where they would not easily be overheard. Thankfully the other guests seemed preoccupied enough with gossip, as they made their way down the front steps of the Castle of Candles and into waiting cars. Better they focused on their conspiracy theories and getting themselves home than asking Kazuma and Imai why they were lagging behind.

"It's going to sound crazy," Imai said ( _Then again, what part of any of this is sane?_ ), "but I could have sworn I saw a dragon."

He wasn't expecting that to strike a chord. "A _dragon?!_ What kind?"

 _There are different_ _kinds_ _?_ "I dunno! The kind with scales and fire-breath that rains down death and destruction!"

"That isn't very specific!"

Imai sighed and shrugged. It was clear they were both losing patience with one another—and if he were the interrogator, he could bet he'd be frustrated with his answers too—but he didn't know what else to tell her. "It was a dragon. Black and red—or maybe red and black, I don't know. It cast a huge shadow over everything, and everything was on fire. I only saw it for a second. I'm afraid I can't give you any more detail than that."

Well, that description ruled out Sohryuu, but not much else. And Kazuma could think of one shinigami who'd recently acquired a black and red, fire-breathing dragon. "When is this supposed to happen?"

"Well, obviously it hasn't happened yet, but I've never had a premonition of something this far in advance before. I suppose it could be a week from now or a year or an hour, for all I know."

"But you haven't had a premonition yet that was wrong."

Imai caught the question in it, and the desperate hope. He hated to disappoint, but "No. Not yet. But there's a first time for everything."

"We need to tell someone about this."

But whom, Kazuma wondered. She didn't have a straight line to Enma, nor was she sure that the Lord of Death would believe the word of a newly minted shinigami who still didn't know how to control his power. Security needed to be put on alert in case this omen came true sooner rather than later, but she wasn't sure she could trust Todoroki to take the necessary precautions, either. More likely he would dismiss her concerns and subject Imai to who knew what sort of tests to try and get a better sense of his power; and in the meantime they would all just be spinning their wheels while the inevitable drew nearer.

Summons had some experience with dragons, though. At very least she could call Konoe with what little Imai knew.

Then it felt like the world dropped out from beneath her.

 _Kochou._ She was with Sakuraiji. And if a dragon _did_ attack, the most vulnerable person would be the one mortal they had been foolish enough to think they could protect in this world.

Meaning Nonomiya would be directly in harm's way.

That decided it. "We're going to the Count."

"But didn't he just kick us all out?" Imai asked. In vain, it seemed, as Kazuma grabbed his arm with a superhuman strength and whisked him back the way they had just come.

* * *

 _The onyx tiles were cool under his hands and knees, the darkness of the chamber, sheltering; but the tiles brought no relief to the shame that burned within him and the darkness could not hide him from judgment. All the things Muraki had made him do— No. All the things Tsuzuki had done while under Muraki's roof, he was loath to tell, let alone relive in his own mind._

 _But. It was over and done with now, and he did not hide his regrets. So, if it pleased the court. . . ._

" _He does not tell us the whole of it," Kaguhana said from the base of the King's dais. "He_ hides _something from us."_

" _You're certain?" boomed the voice from behind the screen._

" _We cannot identify what it is. But we can_ smell _it."_

 _Tsuzuki tried not to let his nerves show as he stared the disembodied heads down, but it was like trying not to scratch an itch. It only seemed to make what ailed him worse. "My lord King," he said, "I hide nothing. I have answered all of your questions promptly and honestly, even at great difficulty to my person. And has your mirror told you I've left anything out? That I've lied or embellished my answers? If anyone can tell if I have been dishonest, it's Your Grace. My mind is an open book to you."_

" _Is it now?"_

 _The figure behind the screen shifted, and Tsuzuki, already on his knees, quickly lowered his eyes. Formality dictated he do so, but terror gripped him, too. He had seen King Enma's face before and ever since he had been unable to wipe it from his mind, no matter how hard he tried to forget. Paintings in the Living World depicted the Lord of Death as a fearsome demon, with the Devil's blood-red skin and fangs like the tusks of a boar. And it was true that he could appear as such to the souls of the dead—or worse—at their judgments, if he thought they deserved it._

 _But he had another image, somehow even more disturbing: the image of a courtly man of no more than thirty, tall, delicate, with long hair that fell in intricate knots and plaits down past his waist. His skin could appear either pale as the moon or coal-black, so that one could never quite tell if he was the inverse of his own image, but he always wore robes of deep scarlet spider-silk that glistened like the raw, bleeding flesh of a flayed man and pooled around him like strewn viscera._

 _And he was beautiful. So beautiful it was painful to look at him, as if he somehow defied comprehension. That was what was cruelest of all, and so difficult for the mortal mind to reconcile: that the face of Death and Judgment itself was so perfect, so peaceful. And so inhumanly apathetic._

" _I want to believe you, Tsuzuki," Enma said. His voice, lyrical and eerily intimate without the screen to project it, though Tsuzuki did not delude himself that it contained genuine warmth for him. "You have shown a commendable willingness to confess to me the worst of what you experienced under confinement. That could not have been easy."_

 _From the corner of his eye, Tsuzuki watched as those long-boned hands produced two square shrouds, which Enma let fall over Mirume and Kaguhana, putting them to sleep just as a cloth over its cage does a bird._

 _As he reached the bottom of the stairs and continued closer, and Tsuzuki lowered his forehead nearly to the tile in front of him, heart pounding in dread of he didn't know what. He meant what he said when he said he wasn't hiding anything. "What good would it serve me to keep the truth bottled up inside? They say guilt rots the soul from the inside, like an infection—"_

" _And in unburdening yourself of it? You wish to be absolved of your sins against me? Or merely free of your guilt?"_

 _There was a trick in that question. So Tsuzuki did not answer. Enma knew that his deepest desire was to be released from this sentence of servitude. That was the only way Tsuzuki would ever truly be "free". He did not need to say it out loud._

 _Enma placed one of those long hands on Tsuzuki's crown, and it felt like the touch of a bodhisattva: light yet solid, and healing-warm. Promising mercy, but at a price._

" _My advisors do not believe you have been entirely_ _forthcoming."_

" _Your Grace, I did not lie about any—"_

" _I do not think that you lied in your testimony. How could you? If you tried, as you said, my mirror would strip your folly bare in an instant."_

 _Enma gently stroked his hair, but that touch, deceptively compassionate, violated Tsuzuki in a way that even Muraki had never been able. Even if he shut his eyes, he could feel Enma's staring back at him from the recesses of his own soul._

 _There was only way to relieve himself of them, he knew. Open his mind completely. Let Enma see everything there was to see. But that was what he thought he was already doing. "My mind is yours, Lord. I don't know what else you want from me!_ _I've told you everything—"_

" _No. Not everything. There is something here, I can just sense it, something that . . . eludes me. But how can it?"_

" _I told you Muraki drugged me when he first took me in. He offered me liquor on numerous occasions. Sometimes I drank until I blacked out—but who wouldn't, in my situation? I thought that was my only way out of that hell! Maybe I just don't remember."_

 _But that wasn't it. Tsuzuki could feel the accusation in his own mind as Enma rooted around. Memories and passing thoughts were tossed about in Tsuzuki's mind as if by a cyclone. There was no corner of his brain that could escape Enma's all-seeing gaze._

 _And yet, something in him did escape._

 _Tsuzuki saw it, but only in a flash: the briefest image projected on his mind of a young boy with his eyes, a smile on his lips that Tsuzuki could only describe as evil as he pressed a hushing finger to them. Then the boy sank back into the void. And vanished._

 _Along with the other presence in Tsuzuki's head._

" _It is gone," said Enma. "How deep your shame must run, Tsuzuki, that even you cannot see the bottom of it." He stroked Tsuzuki's hair back from one ear, and the gesture seemed almost conciliatory. But Tsuzuki wasn't fooled. "Very well," Enma said, turning back towards the throne. "Despite a few . . . reservations, which I shall have noted, I have seen nothing to indicate to me that you are unfit to return to service—"_

 _Tsuzuki must have gasped. He knew this was a possibility, but had he really believed it?_

 _Enma took some amusement from that. "You seem surprised. But you didn't really think you would escape your sentence so easily?"_

When Tsuzuki opened his eyes, the Count's half-mask was staring back at him with that one dead, empty socket. Its jagged line of jaw and sharp-toothed grin seemed to be laughing at Tsuzuki, and all the ironic turns his existence had taken.

But if a voice were to suddenly come from it, Tsuzuki suspected it wouldn't be the Count's laughter he heard, but that of his ten-year-old self, his own manifestation of the malignancy he carried even through death, hidden within him like an absorbed twin: his demonic nature.

"Only one other was ever capable of hiding what was in the depths of his soul, when he stood in judgment before me," Enma had remarked curiously, as if to himself, after he dismissed Tsuzuki from his courtroom, "and he has the advantage of a mask."

 _That's right, Ruka, I forgot to tell you. I met my real father tonight. Somehow I don't think you'd be surprised to know how alike we are. I am, I know now, every bit my father's son._

If he put the mask on again, he would be invisible. Not the sort of invisibility that he used here in Chijou, to walk among the living unseen, but real invisibility. Anonymity. The kind that ought only to belong to the Lords of Death. Why the Count had it and not Enma, Tsuzuki could only guess. All he knew was, it felt made for his face, for his soul. It called to him, seduced him with its power. What it granted wasn't true oblivion, but with that mask Tsuzuki could stay here, wallowing in his misery in this place next to Ruka's bones, forever. He could hide himself away from the world. Perhaps even from Enma.

But not from everyone.

He reached for the mask, and the inside of his wrist glowed beneath his cuff like the display of a digital watch. Persistent. Accurate. Tsuzuki had been wearing the mask when he let himself into Hisoka's apartment earlier tonight, too. And Hisoka had known right where to find him.

That would not do.

Though regret and self-pity had made his whole body feel like lead, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. It was a muggy summer night, and he itched beneath his tuxedo. He had no idea how much time had passed since he came here. It couldn't be as long as it felt. The sky above Tokyo was still pitch-black.

But the dark presence that shared the cemetery with him was blacker still, blacker even than the shadows between the gravestones. It moved with the silence of fog, but the threat of it was deafening as alarm bells. Even the cicadas, whose song should have kept him up all night, were afraid to make a peep so long as it was near.

"Taimou," Tsuzuki addressed it, "I didn't just summon you here to keep me company."

At the sound of her master's voice, the darkness stirred, slipping through the graves on little cat feet.

"Is it true that you can break any lock, any spell? Even those said to be unbreakable?"

A deep, breathy laughter stirred the fallen leaves. The distant lights of the city faded as an immense, impenetrable black shadow in human form rose before him.

Even in Gensoukai, Tsuzuki had never seen Taimou's true face, because there was no face to see. Only the void where one should be, hiding an intelligence that shook him in a way none of his other eleven quite could. The four Guardians of the directions had command over the elements, Touda was death and destruction incarnate and Rikugou and Kijin saw where no one else could, but Taimou was an eternal mystery. Looking into where her face should be was like looking into the nothingness he yearned for with all his soul. And just as forbidden.

" _ **There is no spell that will not yield to me**_ ," that voice from out of the void echoed off the gravestones. Confident and amused, as if Tsuzuki had merely challenged her to a game of checkers.

He raised his right arm toward her, turning it in his other hand so she could clearly see the spell that bound him to Hisoka. "Even this one?"

A single yellow-green eye flickered open within the shadow. Lidless. Socket-less. Like a lantern floating in the dark. The eye swiveled from his wrist to his face, but Taimou did not change her answer.

"I need you to break it."

She did not remind him that the spell was said to be unbreakable for a reason. She must have read Enma's hand in it, but did not see fit to warn him that to defy the Lord of Death was to court destruction. She did not even say whether the spell would be a difficult one to break, or whether doing so would cause him pain.

" _ **As you wish**_ _,_ " was all she said.

Tsuzuki wondered if she would grant all his requests so unquestioningly.

* * *

Hisoka startled awake at the turn of the conference room doorknob. He pulled his knees up to his chest, instinct making him want to present as small a target as possible, and prepared himself to teleport.

But it was just Tatsumi who stepped through the door. Hisoka could relax.

He turned on the light. Then started when he saw Hisoka bunched up against the inside wall, below the windows so no one would see him if they looked in. "Kurosaki?"

"Are you alone?"

"Yes." It was practically a question. "But it's nearly three in the morning. What are you doing here? I thought you were with Tsuzuki."

Hisoka didn't have to say anything. Just the mention of that name and it was all he could do to hold back the tears he'd thought he must have run out of hours ago. Added to that, Hisoka's disheveled appearance, and the fact that he had been sleeping against the baseboards in the office in his tuxedo rather than in his own bed told Tatsumi all he needed to know.

"I'll kill him." His voice was calm, but the room's shadows jumped.

"Nothing actually happened—"

"But he tried. Is that it? I am going to kill Tsuzuki when I see him, I don't care who he is."

The secretary's protectiveness toward him was comforting, but the rage that came off him in waves, not very helpful. Hisoka put out a staying hand as he hoisted himself to his feet. He was sore all over, and Tatsumi probably took that to be Tsuzuki's doing, though this time it was just from sleeping against a hard surface in a tense position.

"I don't want him to know you know," Hisoka said as he peered through the blinds, checking to make sure they truly were alone in the office. Doubtless Tsuzuki would figure it out anyway, but no need to make things worse. "I'm not hurt." Physically, anyway. "Besides, I'm just as much to blame as he is."

"How can you—" Tatsumi shook his head in utter disbelief. "No. No, Kurosaki, don't ever think this sort of thing is your fault."

Normally Hisoka would have agreed with him. He thought of Muraki and his mind games, of Fujisawa telling him when they first met that Hisoka looked like the type who wanted to be raped. As if there were such a thing. Just the excuses selfish, sadistic men made to avoid facing the monsters they were.

"But in this case it's true. You don't understand." Nor, it seemed, did Tatsumi want to try to. "It's this empathy. It's not a one-way street. I _knew_ that, and still I went and got myself in over my head." Again. It seemed to be a bad habit of Hisoka's lately. "I should have controlled my feelings better."

Tatsumi shook his head, the muscles in his jaw clenching. He didn't want to argue, but he would never agree with Hisoka's assessment either. "You didn't tell him about . . ." He itched to say Yatonokami, but dared not. "Yourself?"

"No." Hisoka looked down at his feet. "And how can I now? After that?"

Tatsumi never had been the hugging type, but his stable presence gave Hisoka some strength he very much needed right then. "Anyway," he said, desperate to change the subject, "why are you here at this hour?"

"Honestly?" Tatsumi pushed up his glasses. "I couldn't sleep after the way the party ended. I always wondered what the Count looked like under that mask, but now that I know the answer, I just feel like I've trespassed somewhere no one was ever meant to go." It seemed selfish to him to complain about it now, though. After what Hisoka had just been through. "I thought I might get an early start on work to try and clear my head."

Hisoka nodded numbly. That actually wasn't a bad idea.

"But if you're here, where's Tsuzuki?"

"I left him back at my apartment. I guess I hoped he would crash when I left." Not that Hisoka particularly cared at that moment where Tsuzuki was. In fact, part of him hoped Tsuzuki had gotten himself hit by a garbage truck stumbling out of some Chijou whiskey bar and that Hisoka had at least until midmorning before he had to look Tsuzuki in the face again. He wasn't confident he'd be able to do it. Just thinking about going back to work at the same desk as Tsuzuki, pretending in front of all their coworkers that nothing was different, was almost enough to induce a panic attack.

He knew he had to do it, though, so he tried to use his locating spell just to check on Tsuzuki's whereabouts. Only nothing was coming through. It was like trying to peer through a dense fog. He couldn't feel Tsuzuki at all.

Thinking maybe it was because he didn't _want_ to see Tsuzuki, Hisoka checked his wrist. But the lines of the spell were faint and dim, like an old scar healed over. "That's weird."

"Hm?"

"I thought the locating spell was supposed to be impervious to tampering."

At Tatsumi's furrowed brow, Hisoka held out his wrist for inspection. "It shouldn't look like that," Tatsumi confirmed. "Even across the membranes of worlds . . . It can't have gone out."

"I can't get a fix on Tsuzuki's energy at all. I have no idea where he is."

"We need to inform the chief of this right away." On that, Hisoka could agree.

"Tatsumi," he said while the secretary dialed, "there's something else." Hisoka had been too preoccupied with memories of his assault to think of it, but now that it entered his thoughts, he felt sick with dread. "When Tsuzuki showed up at my apartment, he was invisible."

Tatsumi froze, his thumb hovering above the call button.

"I didn't see him at first. In fact, he startled me after I got in." Hisoka swallowed. How much was it safe to tell Tatsumi? The whole truth—about Tsuzuki's relationship to the Count? The fact that he had called the mask his inheritance?

"He had the Count's mask," Hisoka settled for. He could always add the rest later, but he couldn't unsay it. "He must have stolen it somehow. That has to be why the Count was so furious at the party. Otherwise he never would have allowed us to see his face. I don't know if Tsuzuki's using it right now and that's why the spell won't work, but I didn't seem to have any trouble locating him before."

"This complicates matters," Tatsumi said grimly, before hitting the button and placing the phone to his ear.

Not that he needed to tell Hisoka. Binding him to Hisoka had been Tsuzuki's one shot at a second chance—with Todoroki, with Enma. Not only had he blown that out of the water, but in going after the regalia of the second most powerful being in Enma-cho . . .

Despite everything, Hisoka loved Tsuzuki. He couldn't deny that. He hated him right now for all he was worth, and felt like he never wanted to see him again, he knew what sort of depravity festered in Tsuzuki's soul, and still Hisoka couldn't help loving him. But in stealing the Count's mask, Hisoka feared Tsuzuki had just signed the warrant for his own destruction.

Maybe that was the plan all along.

* * *

 **Author's note:** _More shikigami guesswork, this time on how Taimou would appear outside of Gensoukai. Needless to say, the shadow-person form and having eyes are total artistic license, and I think the bit about breaking spells might be too. I_ do _know her specialty is forbidden magic, though, and shadow people are freaky AF, so. . . ._

 _A lot of artistic license taken on Enma's description too, though it is based on his appearance in volume 12 of the manga._

 _The chapter title, "Miserere mei" means "Have mercy on me" in Latin and comes from Psalm 51. It was famously set to music by Gregorio Allegri._


	32. Cave canem

"I'm being moved again?" Not that it came as much of a surprise that once again she was in danger, only Ukyou was really getting tired of fearing for her life. "I thought you said the Castle of Candles was the safest place for me!"

"It is," said the Count.

"Then why am I leaving it?" And why couldn't they just let her go home?

She knew the answer to the latter question, of course. Nonomiya and Keijou had already explained it to her on half a dozen separate occasions. But that didn't change what she wanted: an end to all this. A return to her normal life. While she still had a life.

The Count—hiding his face behind an _okina_ mask, but at least visible in body, in dress trousers and a smoking jacket and cap—sighed a long-suffering sigh, and let Nonomiya answer for him.

"Because you're still a target. And because the Castle is a nearly impenetrable fortress, that means whoever comes for you will have to penetrate its defenses in order to get what they want. Which makes the Hall of Candles a target vicariously."

"Those candles must remain inviolate," the Count explained when Ukyou's wide eyes turned back to him. "They represent the lives of millions of souls. We here are forbidden to tamper with those candles, but that doesn't mean they cannot be tampered with. If their flames were extinguished here, people would die in the Living World. It would be a slaughter of untold proportions. I am sorry, Doctor, truly. But I'm sure as a woman of reason you can understand that two souls, no matter whom they belong to, do not outweigh millions."

Ukyou's thoughts went to the child in her womb at the reminder. Rationally, she could not fault the Count his logic. Yet somehow she didn't think the child would let anyone or anything sacrifice its mother so easily.

"You really think someone's coming for me?" Todoroki and Zepar both came to mind, the latter wearing Tsuzuki's features all wrong. She'd rather not have to face either.

"Right now, we don't know enough to say for sure—"

"Sorry it took so long," Kazuma said as she breezed into the room, past Watson who was holding the door. "Had to make sure all our ducks were in a row." Placing hands on her hips over her great coat, "We all ready to go?"

Kazuma had found time enough to change into clothes easier to travel in, though she hadn't bothered with the hair and makeup, which still looked ready for a formal function. It was the harassed-looking man who followed behind her that Ukyou was curious about.

Kazuma caught the direction of her gaze. "Oh yeah. This is Detective Imai. Imai, Dr. Sakuraiji. He's the one who got a warning something was going to happen," she elaborated with a thumb over her shoulder.

"What exactly _is_ supposed to happen?" Keijou said in a voice as skeptical as Ukyou's look. All he knew of Imai was that the man had died during the fighting at Ukyou's home a few months ago, and that he had been made a Peacekeeper to fill the spot left by Keijou and his partner, when it was believed they'd both perished. He didn't see how Imai could have the clearance to be here. He was a complication.

"We don't know all the details just yet," Kazuma said before Imai could do more than open his mouth. "But we need to be ready in case more information comes in. Count, I'll call you about any new developments. I trust you'll alert the necessary parties as you see fit."

"I will do what I can. But as you know, my first duty is to the candles. I could not leave them if I wanted to. This fortress _must_ be defended."

Kazuma nodded. "I understand."

And looking on at the exchange, it seemed to Nonomiya as though something that was damaged between Kazuma and the Count had not just been mended, but strengthened tenfold.

The four shinigami hoisted hastily packed bags onto their backs and the whole group made their way downstairs. One of the bags carried basic gear and provisions, mostly for Ukyou, who could not go forever without eating or hydrating like the others could. The rest were full of weapons loaned to them by the Count from his own collection. Keijou had also brought his own katana and Kazuma her pistol, and both she and Nonomiya were prepared to call on their shiki for help if necessary.

"The tunnels are a maze," the Count warned them as they moved, "so stick to the map I gave Ms. Nonomiya. But be assured that if you have a hard time orienting yourself down there, so will anyone who may try to follow you. You should find no shortage of defensible positions. I've taken the liberty of marking a few of them for you."

Ukyou wasn't sure what came over her. Maybe it was these new hormones, or that she now had something to be more afraid of than her past, but before she took that first step and followed Nonomiya and Keijou into the darkness, she turned and flung her arms around the Count in a grateful hug. He must not have been expecting it, because he sputtered like a startled rooster before returning the embrace.

Despite that, for some reason she couldn't quite nail down, it felt like hugging Kazutaka. Or Kazutaka as he had been, back when she could still delude herself that he wasn't the monster he claimed he was.

* * *

"The Count's mask!" Konoe all but collapsed into his office chair at the news. "Tsuzuki, are you _trying_ to give me a second heart attack?"

"It makes sense now," Watari said. "I didn't think the Count would ever _intentionally_ show his face to everyone in the Judgment Bureau. At least not without more pomp and ceremony to accompany the unveiling."

"Not everyone," said Wakaba, who seemed a bit bitter that she had left before the Count came down the stairs, thereby missing the big reveal.

Either that, or she was still sore about catching Terazuma dancing with Kazuma Shin after he swore up and down he didn't dance. (For that matter, Terazuma still hadn't returned Tatsumi's call to come to the office. He might have turned his cell off, Wakaba had informed them, before declaring that she couldn't care less _what_ that backstabbing partner of hers did.)

"But I don't understand why Tsuzuki would do such a reckless thing," she added, tone softening with concern for her longtime friend and colleague. "He just got back. He couldn't stop talking about how he was going to do a better job this time around and appreciate every day here. Doesn't he know what this could mean for him? There's no way Enma's going to be so lenient this time. If he lets Tsuzuki off with another slap on the wrist, what kind of message would that send other shinigami who might be thinking of breaking the rules?"

Hisoka feared their King's lenience had already done enough damage. To the amicability between Summons and the other departments, to Tsuzuki's coworkers, even to Enma's credibility. He doubted Summons' ability to protect Tsuzuki now, even if by some stroke of luck they managed to locate him soon. But he was in no hurry to explain his partner's motives with the mask to the rest of the department.

As if reading his train of thought, Konoe barked, "Kurosaki," startling Hisoka. "You were the last person to see Tsuzuki. You were with him. So why don't we have eyes on him as we speak?"

Hisoka clenched his fist tight until he felt his nails bite into his palm. But it was all he could do to stop from trembling. How was he supposed to tell them . . .

In his hesitation, Tatsumi stepped in, clearing his throat. "Kurosaki didn't want you to know, Chief," he began, while Hisoka's heart hammered in dread of what he was going to say next, "but he, well, overindulged at the Count's party. Not on purpose. It seems someone, who shall remain nameless, plied Kurosaki with liquor while telling him it was a soft drink."

"I'm gonna box that Natsume's ears when I see him," Watari muttered under his breath. So much for remaining nameless. Though if their bespectacled young colleague wanted to defend himself, he should have answered his email and been here by now, too.

At least Watari's outburst lent credibility to Tatsumi's explanation. "Why don't you tell the chief what you told me," Tatsumi said to Hisoka. But it was the reassuring hand he placed on Hisoka's shoulder that made Hisoka's mind for him.

Taking a deep breath, Hisoka repeated the alibi as he received it down through Tatsumi's touch. "When I caught up with Tsuzuki, I took him back to my apartment, thinking it would be the best place to keep watch over him. He was clearly distraught and I thought maybe I could calm him down before work in the morning, but . . . well, I guess the alcohol and the strength of his emotions took a toll on me because I fell asleep. I didn't mean to. But when I woke up, Tsuzuki was gone, and the mask with him."

It was a pretty good lie too, just close enough to the truth that Hisoka could swear to it. He _had_ gone back to his apartment before everyone got to the office, accompanied by Tatsumi. For moral support as well as Hisoka's safety. Just in case Tsuzuki was still there.

He wasn't. But the recent emotions of that place were hard enough to face, Hisoka didn't think he would have had the courage to go back so soon alone. He stayed just long enough to change out of his tux. And to be certain he still couldn't get a sense of where Tsuzuki had gone.

"What about your tracking spell?" said Konoe. "This is the sort of situation King Enma must have been thinking of when he ordered it placed on you two."

Hisoka shook his head apologetically. "It hasn't been working since I woke up. I don't know why."

"You'd have to be incredibly powerful and familiar with these kinds of spells to know how to even begin to tamper with it," Wakaba said. "You don't suppose Tsuzuki just got lucky and stumbled on a way to fool it, do you?"

"What, like burning it off with fuda?" Watari said.

Wakaba didn't seem to think it could work that way. Although, "Tsuzuki does know his fuda magic. Still. He'd be more likely to blast his hand off than alter a spell like that."

"Tsuzuki may be powerful, but if he's an accidental genius, I haven't seen any proof of it in forty years working with him," their chief grumbled.

"Could be the Count's mask of invisibility interfering with your ability to track him," Watari suggested with a shrug. "The fact is we just don't know what that thing is capable of."

Wakaba hummed, giving it some serious thought, but Hisoka said, "I doubt it. Tsuzuki was wearing it when I first caught up with him, so I didn't see him right away. I thought maybe I'd interpreted the signal wrong. But I hadn't. The spell led me right to him, without fail. This is different. More like . . . like the connection's been severed."

Almost like a limb had been severed, Hisoka thought as he looked down at his wrist, and the scar of the locating spell still circling it, white and dead. _Or a part of_ me _has been severed._ It was a queer sensation, but now that that tether to Tsuzuki's soul had been cut, his _absence_ was like a solid thing to Hisoka, a persistent itch. A phantom partner. "There's just nothing there."

"Impossible," Wakaba insisted. "He must have found someone to fool the spell for him. But who?"

"There's another possibility," Tatsumi said. "That the reason you can no longer feel Tsuzuki, Kurosaki, is that he no longer exists."

The others didn't know what to say to that, so they were silent. No one wanted to believe it could be true, but there was a precedent of trying.

But Hisoka was certain that wasn't the case. "If Tsuzuki offed himself while the spell was still intact, I'm sure I would have felt that." Then he would have experienced something worse than phantom limb syndrome. If Tsuzuki tried to destroy himself, let alone if he succeeded, Hisoka was certain his whole world would have screamed it to him loud and clear. At very least, he would not have slept through it.

"Then I guess there's only one thing left to do!" Watari yawned as he stood and stretched his tired back. "No sleep tonight, my friends. Looks like we're gonna have to go looking for Tsuzuki on foot. I'll put on a pot of coffee—"

" _I'll_ put on a pot of coffee," Wakaba cut him off, moving quickly toward the office coffee machine to head the scientist off. Even at a time like this, old mistrust died hard.

"I'll phone the Count," Konoe said as he reached for the landline unit on his desk. "He should be kept abreast of any developments concerning the search for his mask."

He may not have meant it, but Hisoka took an accusation from his words. He should have tried harder. He had one job, to keep Tsuzuki accounted for and out of trouble, and he'd failed. If he had just stayed—

But Hisoka didn't want to think about what might have happened to him if he had.

It was then that Terazuma rushed in, breathing hard. "Tatsumi, I just got your message. What did I miss?"

The coffee pot rattled so hard in the machine, it sounded as though it might crack. Perhaps from the ice in Wakaba's tone. "You sure took your time coming in, Hajime."

"I was asleep. Okay, Mom? The first good sleep I've gotten in months, as it turns out. Sorry, didn't hear my phone ring."

"Really? And where am I to suppose you got this mythical good sleep?"

"In my own bed. I _do_ have my own apartment, you know—and Jesus, Kannuki, what's with the third degree all of a sudden? If a guy wants to sleep in his own bed on occasion, a guy deserves the right to sleep in his own bed! And get some peace and goddamn quiet."

"It's _who_ you're sleeping in it with that's the problem."

" _Huh?_ " When in occurred to Terazuma what she meant, he laughed. "Wait, you mean _Kazuma_?! You think I'm sleeping with Kazuma Shin? The gorilla woman?"

"Well, what am I supposed to think? You were _dancing_ with her, Hajime, after _swearing_ you don't dance and that you wouldn't dance with me! I saw the look you had on your face. All these years we've been partners, you've never once looked at me that way."

"Damn it, Kannuki, if you would stop being so goddamn jealous for one minute, you'd realize you're blowing this whole thing way out of proportion!"

Wakaba was barely holding it together. Hisoka could feel how fragile a facade the righteous anger was, how easily it could shatter and give way to the fear underneath if Terazuma didn't change the tone of his responses and soon. The lack of sleep was wearing on everyone, this new source of stress further unraveling already frayed nerves.

And Hisoka felt it all. It would have been one thing if it distracted from his own worries, but as it was, it just fed Yatonokami and heaped more rubble onto the weight of negative emotion that was already crushing his soul. He supposed it was a small blessing that he wasn't the center of attention for a little while, but it didn't feel like anything to be grateful for.

Tatsumi was warning his two coworkers to calm themselves and lower their voices, and they must have felt _very_ strongly about the matter if they were ignoring even his threats of disciplinary action.

But Konoe's sudden gesturing _did_ get their attention. As the others quieted their squabbling, drifting back toward his office, Konoe said, "Hold on, Count, I'm going to put you on speaker. I'd like you to tell my team what you just told me."

* * *

The cherry trees that surrounded the offices of the Judgment Bureau glowed in the night, like a violet afterimage on the back of the eyelids. Even on a moonless night, they seemed to produce a faint luminescence all their own. And in the quiet with no one else around, the stirring of their branches in the slightest breeze seemed like whispered gossip passed between them.

It was all a lie.

Worse than a lie. Hypocrisy. A reminder of the fragility and transience of life, but in an eternal, unchanging shape. Even the petals that fell from the blossoms during the day Tsuzuki was sure disappeared from the ground and were regrown at night. Those trees were a mockery of everything the living suffered for, of the truth and beauty they wasted their own lives and each others' pursuing.

And they weren't even real. Just an illusion, conjured up by a cruel god to torment the souls he kept suspended in animation. Giving them all something of home to remember their humanity by. Except without that crucial thing, transience, all those trees did was numb the dead to the steady march of time outside this world, so eternity might seem bearable. And life seem like nothing but a dream. . . .

And if life was a dream, then nothing they did was real, right? Just reap, those trees seemed to tell them, and don't worry yourself wondering how it feels. The farmer doesn't worry if the field can feel his scythe. Why should you?

It deserved to be destroyed, that illusion, that lie. Everyone who worked in the service of King Enma deserved to see the truth of who and what they served. And decide for themselves, whether despair was something worth fighting for, killing for. Whether a throne of bones was worth kneeling to.

It was up to Tsuzuki to tear down the proverbial curtain, once and for all. No one else had the will nor the power to do it. But he had his shikigami, and the Count's mask, and his own cursed blood on his side. When he was finished, Enma would regret not ending him when he had every chance.

* * *

The Judgment Bureau appeared empty at that time of night, no tiger-headed guards to bar his way. If there had been, they might have spotted him by the half-mask which seemed to float on its own through the halls. Surely security had been alerted to the theft and was already on the lookout for Tsuzuki and the Count's mask. He could practically feel the eyes glued to security monitors in dark rooms, scanning the feeds from the cameras he had passed beneath along the way for any sign of him.

But that didn't worry him. With any luck, he would have finished with his task before anyone could arrive to stop him.

Not that he needed _luck._

"Taimou."

At her master's voice, the shadow that had been following him along the corners of the ceiling and floors coagulated, and reshaped itself as a tall, thin, humaniform black mist behind the floating mask.

"Behind that door," Tsuzuki told her, "is Juuohcho's mainframe. I wish to access it—but I need _you_ to bypass the locks."

As if responding to the threat in his words—or, more likely, to Taimou's prying gaze—the charms that held the great doors locked closed flared into relief. Layered mandalas of arcane writing and forbidding symbols glowed like a three-dimensional neon sign, and from the center of it all stared an ornate, all-seeing eye.

Of which Taimou's was a mirror. " _ **This will take a moment**_ ," she observed, that eye flickering and rolling as she set to work examining Enma's magic. " _ **But I must warn you that even attempting to remove these spells will alert all guards in the surrounding area to our location—**_ "

"Okay, but can you get us in?"

Taimou paused for a beat. Dare he say in concern? " _ **Of course. However, once that is done, I fear your mask will no longer provide adequate protection.**_ "

In other words, Tsuzuki would have to prepare himself to receive company. Well-armed company, and a lot of it.

Tsuzuki looked over his shoulder, at the cameras in the corners that monitored that door. It didn't really matter what they saw or didn't. Or who came to greet him. He could handle anything Enma threw at him tonight. He had nothing else to lose.

"Break it down if you have to, Taimou. It's time we all stopped keeping so many secrets."

* * *

"Which way now?" Kazuma said as they came to a particularly hairy junction in the tunnels. Paths branched off every which way into the dark, each one looking very much like the next.

"Hold on," said Nonomiya, juggling flashlight and map. "If I remember right . . . Ah, yes. If we take the tunnel at two o'clock, it should lead to an area marked on the map as a bunker. At very least, it should be structurally sound enough to keep Dr. Sakuraiji safe."

Those words filled Ukyou with dread every time she heard them. As though with each repetition, something stalking her was summoned closer, and given new strength. It didn't help that her flashlight's beam only penetrated a little ways into the dark passages. The shadows of pillars seemed to move like living things with every swing of the light, and it didn't take much stretch of her imagination to think of the low fog that drifted through some of the tunnels as the breath of some subterranean beast.

"What exactly are we keeping her safe from?" Keijou spoke up, impatience clear in his tone of voice. "You still haven't said."

"Detective Imai received an anonymous warning—" Kazuma began, but Keijou cut her off.

"Yeah, so you keep saying. But a warning of what? You expect us to follow this rookie, but you won't even tell us what it is we're running from? Now, why in Hell should I trust you? Why should I take another step when, for all I know, you might be leading the doctor into a trap!"

"How could you even think that _we,_ as _Peacekeepers,_ would risk the life _—_ " Nonomiya tried, but he would hear none of it.

" _You_ weren't acting very much like a Peacekeeper when you decided you'd rather defend that renegade, Tsuzuki, over the law and order you swore to protect."

"My actions that night were justified. _You_ were the one attacking fellow shinigami. I was only trying to mitigate the damage so no one would be permanently hurt!"

"I see. So Agrippina's demise was _your_ failure, then. And what about all those bystanders who died in their sleep? Or was it only the souls of Summons agents that concerned you? Me and my partner were disposable to you, is that it?"

"Don't they have a right to know?" Imai whispered to her in the dark, and with a sigh, Kazuma relented. It was better than listening to Keijou and Nonomiya argue over who was more responsible for destroying Ukyou's home, in front of Ukyou no less, for the rest of the night.

Or so she thought. Needless to say, when Imai was done explaining what he had seen, no one was OK with the idea that dragons and a fiery inferno were coming their way.

"How sure are you about this?" Ukyou asked Imai. "You said it was a premonition, so that means there's a chance it might not happen. Right? That somebody can do something to stop it?"

Imai shook his head. "I'm afraid it doesn't work that way. Maybe 'premonition' isn't the right word. It's more like time is screwed up in my head. I get these . . . flashes, these visions that feel just like memories, only they're memories of things that haven't happened yet. Things that _will_ happen."

"And you're sure there's nothing we can do to change things?" Nonomiya tried one last time.

"We are doing something," Kazuma said. "We're preparing for the inevitable. So when it comes, maybe the effects won't be so bad." Though that argument sounded pretty weak even to her own ears.

"Then what are we doing lugging _him_ around?" Keijou said, meaning Imai. "If he's the one seeing these things before they happen, making backwards memories or whatever, then that means he's present for them. We should be getting ourselves as far away from this albatross as we can."

Imai had half a mind to agree, but Kazuma had other ideas. Also, she apparently had little love to lose for Keijou. "He's our _canary_!" she shouted back. "And we need him. Imai's our early-warning system, the only one we have. If something's coming that could threaten Dr. Sakuraiji's life, don't you think it'd be useful to know what it is?"

"He's a distraction. At best. At worst, a big target painted on our backs that we can't afford with a mortal's life depending on us. We need to stay focused on our mission. Imai's too green to know what he's doing—"

"Your dissenting opinion has been noted, Agent Keijou, but the detective is staying with us. Unless there's some other problem you have with him that you're eager to share?"

Keijou clenched his jaw and wouldn't say any more. He'd made his misgivings clear.

"Now, if there's nothing else, let's pick up the pace. We don't know how long we have until . . . what we're waiting for comes to pass."

And with that, the five were back on their way.

They didn't get far when, out of nowhere, Imai suddenly shouted and braced himself and looked up at the ceiling.

"What's wrong?" Kazuma asked him in a voice close to a panic. Needless to say, she had been waiting for a dragon to show itself ever since Imai first told her about his vision.

Keijou, on the other hand, sighed his exasperation loudly.

"I don't know." But clearly Imai was expecting more. "I suddenly had a feeling like I was being shaken. If any of you've ever been in an earthquake—"

Before he could even finish, the tunnel around them shook violently. Nonomiya grabbed Ukyou and braced the two of them against the wall, covering Ukyou's body with her own. But whatever had just happened, it didn't do much but loosen a few chips of concrete from the ceiling.

"I don't think that was an earthquake," said Keijou when the shaking stopped. He seemed to be listening for something Nonomiya couldn't hear.

As did Kazuma. "It sounded like blasting. And it seemed to have come from the main campus. . . . Yes. Judgment Department."

"How can you tell from down here?" said Imai, but though Kazuma didn't say, Nonomiya suspected it was Kokushungei increasing the sensitivity of her hearing. She noticed Kazuma hadn't actually needed her flashlight beam to see where she was going, either, though she still carried one out of habit.

"Never mind that," Nonomiya said. "Why would anyone be blasting in Judgment. Unless—"

An alarm sounded, even in the underground, the ear-splitting blare echoing through the tunnels. "That's the intruder alert!" Nonomiya shouted over it. "There must have been a security breach!"

"We've got to get Dr. Sakuraiji bunkered down!" Kazuma yelled back. "This way!"

Nonomiya could not have agreed more. She handed Ukyou off to her partner as Kazuma and Imai led the way, and glanced back to make eye contact with Keijou.

But when she turned, it was only just in time to see him fading back into the darkness of the tunnel they had just come from. She was just about to ask him where in the world he thought he was going when Ukyou needed his protection, but the grin on his lips was one she could only describe as malicious. As difficult as Keijou could be to work with, Nonomiya had never seen him smile like that in all the years she had known him, and it chilled her to the core and froze her in her tracks.

His retinas glowed ominously from the shadows a full two seconds before he vanished completely. But Nonomiya couldn't risk going after him now. Ukyou's life depended on her.

* * *

Focalor allowed himself a chuckle as he strode through the underground labyrinth, Keijou's great coat billowing around him like the wings he had once had. Though he had no love for the man, he sent a silent thanks to Tsuzuki for the distraction. And what was more—

 _You've just made my job that much easier._

Of course he knew it was Tsuzuki who had caused the blast. He had been acting just unstable enough at the Count's party—stealing the Count's mask, of all things, definitely the act of a man who has taken leave of his senses—that Focalor would have been surprised if anyone else were responsible for it. He could also sense, like a change in the charge of the air, that Enma-cho's defenses had just been weakened. Ideally Focalor would have preferred to use Keijou's clearance within the Judgment Bureau to find a shortcut through the system, use Enma's own technology against him to open a portal. But, he supposed, one had to work with what one was given.

And what he had was a shinigami's body and a shinigami's powers, and knowledge of a soft spot in this world's membrane that he had passed along the way here. It would take only a little pressure to pop it like a bubble.

Keijou, naturally, resisted when he understood what Focalor planned to do. It was repugnant to everything he was and stood for as a shinigami to help the devil in his treasonous task.

But at this point he could do little but watch. Even without his consent, Focalor had been propagating himself inside the shinigami's body, a process which the endless supply of rich energy had made exponentially faster than when he had possessed mortal humans. Now he understood that Sargatanas hadn't been a fool for taking refuge inside one of Enma's trained dogs. Quite the contrary. His only mistake had been aiming for the top dog, when any old shinigami would have served his purposes just fine.

* * *

"Todoroki's still not answering his damn phone," Konoe announced, after returning his to its cradle with a slam.

"Isn't that a good thing?" Watari sang under his breath.

"Normally I would say yes, but under the circumstances . . ." Konoe would have liked to get in contact with _anyone_ from the Peacekeeping Division at this point, but either no one was around at this time of night or none had the guts to answer their chief's phone for him. "How close are we to establishing a link to the security system?"

"I'm just about patched in," Watari said as he typed away at his setup, which now consisted of the monitors and CPUs from various workspaces cabled together, plus some equipment he had rushed over from his own office. Hisoka didn't understand what it was all supposed to do, but if it got them even a little closer to finding Tsuzuki, he was ready to do whatever was necessary to help, including staying out of Watari's way.

"Bingo!" Watari cracked his knuckles as an array of security camera feeds popped up on three of the monitors. "We now have access to the CCTV. If Tsuzuki passes by any of its cameras, we should know right away."

"Assuming Tsuzuki doesn't know exactly where they are and avoids them," Tatsumi said, leaning on the back of his coworker's chair as he watched over Watari's shoulder.

In the meantime, they had Terazuma and Wakaba and the other section teams popping into Tsuzuki's favorite haunts in the Living World, narrowing down the places he might have run off to by process of elimination. Tatsumi had sent Saya and Yuma to Peacekeeping, to find out from them directly why Summons' phone calls were being ignored. Not a task anyone in their department normally would have wanted, but Saya was determined to get answers for them soon, no doubt seeing the mission as her opportunity to prove herself worthy of Konoe's trust.

"I should be out there with everyone else," Hisoka muttered, growing impatient sitting around the office. "I'm not doing him or you guys any good here. At very least, I could be searching Juuohcho grounds—"

"Absolutely not," said Konoe, with a force that surprised Hisoka. "We'll need you close by when we do find Tsuzuki."

The emphasis on "when" didn't escape him. Neither did the chief's true feelings on the matter. And his fears. _In case I have to talk him down, you mean._

But that wasn't the whole story. "We're wasting time, and you know that with my powers—"

"Your powers are exactly why I need you to stay put." The Count's warning had not been far from anyone's mind since they'd first heard it, even if they had all been hesitant to jump to conclusions or early accusations. Realizing he could no longer dance around the matter, Konoe sighed. "Look, Kurosaki, don't take this personally, but we can't ignore this threat that a dragon matching Kurikara's description is going to attack Enma-cho."

"But that's all it is at this point: a threat. I haven't even thought about— How can anyone even know that in advance? Are you really going to base your strategy on a premonition somebody had?"

"Not just a premonition. The person who delivered the information . . . Apparently he hasn't been wrong yet."

The chief was trying very hard not to reveal the identity of said person, but Hisoka could piece it together. It had to be that new Peacekeeping recruit, the former detective who'd accused Hisoka of his murder at the Count's party. He said Rikugou had killed him—and one of the powers Rikugou was known for was seeing the future. But how did they know that this "premonition" hadn't merely been invented by a man who wanted revenge for his own death?

"So you understand," Konoe went on, "we have to take every precaution—"

"By muzzling me?" Hisoka cursed under his breath. "This is ridiculous. Tsuzuki hasn't even _done_ anything that would make me _think_ of summoning Kurikara here. What if I swear that I won't summon him, no matter what happens?"

But Konoe shook his head.

"I can't sit here doing nothing, Chief! You know the longer Tsuzuki's out there, unaccounted for—and with the Count's mask . . ."

He didn't need to finish that threat. This night was starting to feel like a rerun. Like they'd been here before, and knew things would only get worse. It was all Hisoka could do to keep his heart from beating out of his throat with anxiety. He didn't need the power of foresight to feel that something awful was coming. And if there was something he could do to prevent it, that he wasn't being allowed to do—

"Once Natsume gets here," Tatsumi suggested, "he and I will conduct a thorough search of Juuohcho grounds. He knows all the shortcuts, and I know the places Tsuzuki visits most frequently." And he nodded in Hisoka's direction, as if to say, Would that be enough to reassure you?

"Sure," Watari said without looking up from his monitors. " _If_ Natsume ever gets here. Still no mail, Bon?"

Hisoka checked his phone for what felt like the hundredth time in minutes. Still nothing.

"And no sign of K either," Tatsumi thought aloud.

Which, on the surface of things, was nothing unusual. She would be with Natsume, if she was doing her job properly. But it was the _way_ Tatsumi voiced his concern that filled Hisoka with yet another unwelcome source of dread. He hoped Natsume would forgive him, but the time to keep quiet was over.

"I have some idea where they might be," he started to say.

But before he could get out more than that, an enormous boom shook the building around them, as if from an explosion. Hisoka, Tatsumi and the chief rushed to the windows to see if there was any visual indication of what had just happened. But if they were expecting some sort of fireball mushrooming into the sky, they were at least a little relieved to see none.

"Uh, security's indicating a breach in the offices of Judgment," Watari told them, "unauthorized access in the restricted zone, and whatever it was just blew through a whole slew of impossible-to-crack spells like they were wet tissue paper. Enma's Guard is mobilizing to respond and emergency lockdown is in place, but if our intruder made such quick work of the first set of locks, I don't see how well those are gonna hold. Shit . . ." A waver of fear in his voice: "The Judgment Bureau's mainframe is in the restricted zone. Though so far it looks like the only damage is to Environmental Controls—"

"They're already down," Konoe said.

Below them, the grove of cherry trees was gone.

Or perhaps, not gone, but not in bloom either. Where just minutes ago there had been purple clouds outside their office window, there was now a bleak stretch of dead, ashen ground and scraggily black tree trunks, their limbs reaching as though in desperation to escape some torment toward a lead-gray sky. It was the kind of landscape left after a devastating fire, a nuclear winter, with no brightness left in it. It was a vision of a certain kind of Hell, one of barrenness and despair.

It wasn't the first time Hisoka had seen Enma-cho as it really was, but there had been more immediate matters to preoccupy him that other time—namely Suzaku attacking anyone who tried to get close to Tsuzuki—that had kept the reality of it from soaking in.

That time Tsuzuki had been responsible for it, albeit inadvertently. Now Hisoka was sure he was to blame again, only with intention. Even without proof, even with the connection between them severed, Hisoka knew it was true. The bad way Tsuzuki had been in when Hisoka last saw him was damning enough. And he wanted to lash out in his frustration. It was happening again. _Had_ happened again. And he hadn't done a damn thing to try and stop it.

"Holy shit . . ." Watari breathed, sounding as though he had just seen a ghost.

And when they turned to peer at the monitor with him, Hisoka understood why. Even being dead himself, and having seen the demons and monsters he'd seen in his career, he was not prepared for the image of a giant, man-shaped shadow loping through Judgment's halls, stretching itself into impossible lengths, dissolving itself over here and reforming over there. It was as if an alien had appeared in Juuohcho, and it almost seemed as though _they_ were the ones being watched by this thing, down the wires and circuits and electrical signals that connected them to its image. Even Tatsumi's shadows weren't as intimidating. At least they were subject to his will and didn't have a mind of their own.

"Where in hell did that come from?" Hisoka heard himself ask.

"Tsuzuki," Tatsumi practically spat through his teeth. "It's one of his."

"You're certain?" said Konoe. Seemed none of them wanted to entertain what they knew to be true.

Tatsumi nodded. "Entirely. That's Taimou. I would recognize her anywhere. A mistress of forbidden magic."

And the awe in his voice when he whispered the last bit didn't escape Hisoka's notice. A shadow-user afraid of a shadow—should that concern them? Had Tatsumi seen Tsuzuki use her before? Hisoka remembered running into Taimou his first time in Gensoukai. Her facelessness had given him a start, but at least then she had looked more or less human.

"Wait. What kind of 'forbidden' are we talking about here?" Watari said when no one else spoke. "Blood magic or mind control, or . . ."

"A bit of all of the above, including breaking any and all manner of spells. If you were wondering how Judgment's defenses were cracked so easily," Tatsumi snapped his fingers at the computer screen, "there's your answer."

That would explain why the spell binding him to Tsuzuki no longer worked, too, Hisoka thought.

"Can she be stopped?" Konoe wanted to know.

"It's worth a try."

And before Hisoka could ask him what he meant, Tatsumi was heading briskly for the door without a glance back. Hisoka opened his mouth to tell him to wait, he was coming too—

But as if reading his mind, Konoe's hand on his shoulder and the command in it stopped him where he was.

"He needs help, Chief! We know where Tsuzuki is now, and Tatsumi can't face him alone—"

"You're the _last_ person I want trying to help right now, Kurosaki!" Konoe shut him down. "Under no circumstances can we risk Kurikara coming to Meifu! You don't even know if you can control him! What we need right now is to contain the situation, stop the damage from spreading to other systems, and allow the proper authorities to do their jobs. Do you understand?"

Hisoka clamped down tight on the protest that threatened to burst out of him. Rationally, he knew Konoe had a point. Even if he promised not to summon Kurikara, he couldn't guarantee he wouldn't break that promise as soon as it suited him. They couldn't risk it.

But the snake inside of him thought differently. It coiled and flexed and stretched itself out until he felt it pressing against the back of his throat, threatening to do the speaking for him. It was all Hisoka could do to repress it. He could feel its desires as his own, and it desired to rush to Tsuzuki's side. It desired to be released.

He glanced over at Watari, and saw the scientist staring back at him. Fear for Tatsumi written plain across his face. But also fear for Hisoka.

Or else fear of what he might do.

* * *

Another all-night hole-in-the-wall whiskey bar with no sign of Tsuzuki, or a floating mask. Wakaba sighed as she ticked it off her mental list of Tsuzuki's usual Tokyo haunts, hoping their coworkers were having better luck in Kyoto and Kyushu. Or any luck for that matter. Though she wasn't sure which counted as lucky: finding Tsuzuki drinking himself senseless somewhere in Chijou, or not finding him.

"You know," she said to Terazuma for what might have been the dozenth time that hour, "we'd cover more ground if we split up."

"No way. We can conserve our energy if we teleport together. We might need it later."

In other words, he wasn't letting her out of his sight. Not until they talked about earlier that evening.

So, Wakaba figured, they might as well just get it out of the way so they could focus on the task at hand. "If you're looking for the right time to apologize, you might as well just do it."

"Me? Apologize?" Terazuma snorted. "For what? _I'm_ not the one making mountains out of molehills. The only thing I did with Kazuma was dance with her."

"But that's just it, Hajime! That's everything I wanted you to do with _me_! And for so long we _couldn't_. You knew how much it would mean to me to dance with you now that we could, and you took that away from me. How can you expect me to believe that it meant _nothing_ to you when it meant _everything_ to me?"

"Why is it even that important to you? You don't see me getting my panties in a twist when I see you dancing with Tsuzuki."

I will not get upset, Wakaba repeated to herself, knowing it wouldn't help her case to get teary-eyed over this. But it _did_ matter to her. How could she ever get him to see that? "It's not the same—"

She was interrupted by both their cell phones chiming with a new message from Konoe. One of Tsuzuki's shikigami had been spotted in Meifu. In the offices of Judgment, to be exact. He couldn't be far away from it. All Summons officers were ordered to return immediately.

But before they could teleport, Terazuma seized her wrist. "Hajime, we have to go—"

"It was Shungei," he said before she could utter another word of protest. " _That_ was who was I was dancing with. Okay? Kazuma's her host now, whether the two of us like it or not, and . . . Well, damn it, I missed her. That was the closest I'd been to Shungei in months. I did it for her sake, not for Kazuma's. And Kazuma certainly didn't do it for me."

 _How could I not have seen that?_ It must have been a highly compatible possession if Wakaba had missed all the signs.

Or maybe she'd simply been too happy to have Hajime all to herself for the first time ever to notice just how hard he was taking the loss. Here she'd felt something precious was being torn away from her, but Hajime had already had that precious thing taken from him, and he had been powerless to do anything about it. Could she really say she blamed him for wanting to feel, if only for a little while, what it was like to have it back?

"I wish you'd just told me," Wakaba said, not ready to say she was sorry. "I wouldn't have been so jealous."

"Mmm, somehow I don't think it would have made much difference—"

She punched him in the arm for that.

But after his "oof," Terazuma looked back at her with a softened expression. "Can we pick this up later, Kannuki? I promise, I'll be nothing but frank."

"I'll hold you to it," she said as she took his hand in hers to make the jump back home.

* * *

The blast that rocked the offices of the Judgment Bureau was muted down in Billing, but still startling enough to make K stop in her tracks and look up at the ceiling, just to make sure it didn't start caving in. Her ears and whiskers pointed forward, on alert for any signs of coming danger.

Structural integrity did not appear to be affected, however, nor did anyone arrive to stop her from her business, so she continued on her way toward the server rooms. If that blast was a sign of anything, it was that she didn't have much time to act. Natsume had been right to split up, after receiving that warning from Kira. K's talents were needed here. She just hoped he didn't do anything too stupid while she wasn't there to watch him.

* * *

"Another dead end," Kazuma sighed, shining her flashlight over the brick wall in front of them.

"Damn it!" Nonomiya pored over the map, going back over their route easily a dozen times, but she couldn't make it add up. "I was _sure_ we were heading in the right direction! Either the scale is off or this map hasn't been updated in forever, because there should be a vault right here!"

"Let me take a look," Ukyou said, edging in.

While the three of them retraced their steps, Imai swung his beam over their surroundings. In part to make sure nothing was waiting in some dark corner to ambush them, in part to see if there was some clue that the passageway had been altered. There appeared to be an old archway within the section of brick, which might have once served as a door or window, but might also have been for structural support—

 _Bang!_ A gunshot rang out in Imai's head. He spun to see where it had come from—and saw Kazuma go down. The bullet must have struck her spine, he thought, because after that she didn't move—

He shook his head in shock, and everyone was still where he'd last seen them, Kazuma talking to Nonomiya and Sakuraiji. _Another vision. . . ._

But he didn't know when this one was going to come true, and he didn't want to take any chances. "Sempai!" he called out in warning, and even before she turned he was throwing himself on her, pushing her to the ground.

The shot did ring out then. Imai felt the bullet tear into his shoulder and through a lung and probably his liver before exiting out his back. He'd never been shot before, but it was every bit as awful as he'd always imagined. He couldn't even breathe for the pain. Forget that. He couldn't even move.

But if there was one consolation, he had changed the future from what he'd been shown in his vision. He hadn't thought that was possible.

"Imai . . . Imai!" Rolling the detective off her, Kazuma shook him when he failed to respond the first time. If he'd been alive, that wouldn't have been an immediately fatal wound. But seeing as he was dead, she expected some sort of response. Instead, Imai lay there as if stunned, stiff, only his jaw clenching in pain and his eyes rolling towards hers in panic to indicate he was still conscious. Just unable to talk or move.

 _Poisoned._ And Kazuma knew what by. Which had to mean someone from her own department had fired the shot. Was this what Keijou had been planning when he left them? He hadn't bothered to hide his distrust of Imai. But what could he possibly hope to accomplish by attacking them?

Kazuma reached for her pistol—but stopped as if stunned herself when she heard the warning: "Next one goes through your spine, Agent Kazuma. Put your hands up and turn around slowly."

Kazuma did as told, seeing Nonomiya place herself as a shield in front of Ukyou. "Mind explaining what this is about, Chief?" she said, trying to keep her voice level when everything inside her—Kokushungei included—wanted nothing more than to tear Todoroki apart. "Mind telling us why you just shot one of your own agents?"

"Detective Imai?" Todoroki waved the name away with his free hand. "I have nothing against him. He just got in the way."

"You were aiming for me?"

Her chief grinned. "I had to do the math, Ms. Kazuma, neutralize the most difficult threat first. What can I say, I was supposed to have more help when I got here but I notice Mr. Keijou is no longer with you."

"He wandered off on his own a while back," Nonomiya said. "We don't know where he is."

"But now we know he was supposed to sell us out to you, so thanks for that," Kazuma growled, feeling her lip twitch into a smile as the Black Lion readied for a fight. "It's still three against one. We can take you before you get to Sakuraiji."

"I wouldn't recommend that," Natsume said, stepping out of the shadows to join Todoroki. He too leveled his weapon, a shotgun, at Kazuma, as he said in that deceptively calm and genial voice of his that she'd never quite trusted, "If you transform down here, this tunnel could come down and Dr. Sakuraiji could be crushed, or hit by a stray bullet. None of us wants that to happen, so I believe for now you have no choice but to do as we say."

"I can believe this of _him_ ," Kazuma said with a nod toward her boss, "but I can't believe you'd betray your friends, Natsume."

"Mr. Natsume betrayed no one," Todoroki said. "He was merely convinced that working for me would be the surest way to see his various transgressions against the Judgment Bureau expunged from his record."

She studied the young man's face to see if that was true, but either Natsume was very talented at not letting any emotion show through his immutable smile, or else he had gone over to Todoroki's side body and soul.

"I had hoped," the chief continued, "that I might convince the two of you to see the same sense and surrender yourselves peacefully, but I see I may have been reaching."

"We'll never let you harm Ukyou," Nonomiya vowed. "We _will_ fight you both, tooth and nail, if that's what's necessary."

Todoroki just laughed at that. "But I have no intention of harming the doctor! No, I very much want her alive and well. Her and that child she carries."

Ukyou didn't understand. She thought for sure that Todoroki wanted her baby dead before it could be born. Wasn't that what all those wicked looks he had given her every time he saw her were meant to convey? His disgust at what he thought was Kazutaka's child?

"You too?" Kazuma scoffed. "Why does everyone want this baby? We both know you're not the fathering type, Chief."

"That child represents the next step in the evolution of the human race," Todoroki declared. As though they must have been idiots not to have figured out the answer for themselves. "It is a living example of humanity perfected! Just as its father is humanity perfected. But how could I expect the lot of you to know that? The records have been sealed for decades, and they only tell pieces of the story.

"But _I_ remember. I was there with Dr. Muraki through the crucial stage. It was his dream, his life's greatest ambition to create the ideal human being—a superman, if you will—one that did not suffer from disease or decay or that infirmity we call a conscience—"

"Sounds like he's trying to create a psychopath," Kazuma spat. "No wonder Enma wants him dead."

But Todoroki shook his head. "Not Muraki Kazutaka. The grandfather, Yukitaka. It was his desire to raise humanity out of its base, animal nature by kickstarting a new race. My only regret was that I was not alive to see his success in person. That's why I've taken the liberty of summoning him here."

"Yukitaka?" Then, were the rumors that his soul had been erased just that? Rumors?

"Of course not." The chief of Peacekeeping grinned, and it rather reminded Ukyou of a shark moving in for the kill, its lips pulling back off the teeth. "I'm talking about his creation. His . . ." Todoroki chuckled, as if they all should have found the word as entertaining as he did: " _grandson_."

* * *

The smoke and vapors from chemical suppressants made Tsuzuki cough and his eyes burn, but it was worth a little discomfort to see the mess he had made of Enma-cho's environmental controls. It would take more than a hard reboot to repair that Gordian knot of melted slag and wires.

" _ **You did not tell me this was what you planned to do once I got you in here.**_ "

He didn't care for the note of regret in Taimou's voice, faint though it might have been. "Would you have refused my orders if I had?"

" _ **No. It is my pleasure to serve. However—**_ "

"Then what difference does it make?"

The Judgment Bureau had bounced back from worse damage before, and in short order. But it would provide sufficient distraction while he accomplished what he needed to do. And in the meantime, every human soul who occupied and worked here would see Enma-cho for the place of desolation and despair that it truly was.

" _ **Guards are closing in on our position.**_ "

Good, Tsuzuki thought. After that little explosion, he was itching for a fight. "I can handle them," he told Taimou. "What I need from you now is to locate the Kiseki. Can you do that, or do I need to call on someone else?"

He thought he detected a split-second's hesitation before she answered " _ **Leave it to me, Master Tsuzuki,**_ " and vanished. Though he could not be sure whether her hesitation was concern for his safety, or for the rest of the building's.

True to Taimou's warnings, the first wave of guards arrived shortly after. Their snarling tiger faces and armor and spears might have been enough to stay Tsuzuki's hand with a sense of sacrilegious trespass before, but he was beyond concerns like that now. If he was going to blaspheme against his God, against Enma, then let it be completely. Let there be no doubt left in Enma's mind what he needed to do.

By habit, Tsuzuki reached into his tuxedo jacket for a fuda. But he had not thought to bring any to the Count's party, so there were none. That was alright. He did not actually need them.

The guards closed in, their spear tips lowered, ready to skewer him if that was what it took to restrain him. But Tsuzuki had a dynamo churning inside him. He let his anger and his thrill at destruction become his weapon, releasing a wave of telekinetic energy that slammed the guards hard enough into the walls to dent them and blew out the nearest lights.

It was satisfying, to hear the crunch of wall panels and bones, the crackle and pop of light fixtures. But it took enough out of Tsuzuki that he had to pause to catch his breath.

As he was doing so, the next wave of guards rushed forward to fill the void. He felt the edge of a halberd slice through his jacket and shirt and take a shallow gouge out of his side. He was lucky. If he had not been wearing the mask, no doubt the blade would have run him through.

And then, Tsuzuki thought, even as the halberd was still continuing along its line of thrust, he would have been in real trouble. Already he could feel the singeing pain of a venom-laced weapon. But Muraki had shown him how even that pain could be fought through. If he let it fuel him. If he let the spreading numbness dull not his senses, but his scruples.

He seized hold of the pole of the halberd as it passed and, his hands unseen, gave it a hard yank and thrust it back the other way. The guard was taken unawares, stumbling back as his own weapon hit him hard in his armored middle, and letting go. Tsuzuki sliced two more with the blade of it before the others blocked his blows. One of them swung down hard on the halberd's shaft, breaking it in half. Oh well. Weapon combat had never been Tsuzuki's forte, and he had a slight advantage using his bare hands and his feet, which his attackers could not see. They had only half a mask to aim for, and after a little difficulty, and more energy spent on deflection, Tsuzuki was able to dodge their blows and flee down the hall.

An "explode" command, hastily scrawled on a wall in his own blood, blew out another section of hallway as he ran and set off another, even more urgent-sounding alarm. But it wouldn't keep the guards off him for long. He could summon another one of his shikigami. Setting a tiger god on the half-tiger demons would have been a type of poetic justice, but he could not risk Byakko bringing down the building around him.

Daiin, Tsuzuki thought with a grin. Get the guards so drunk they would be falling over each other trying to follow him. Add Kouchin to the mix and they would be partying in the halls while Judgment burned. Oh, how Enma would torture his army for their failure then.

But Taimou materialized around him once again, and he sobered. "You found it? Already?"

" _ **I will take you there now**_ ," she said, and Tsuzuki found himself being swirled up in darkness and spirited away before the next wave of guards could close in for the attack.

* * *

Ukyou reeled, catching herself against the rough, damp wall. _Kazutaka's coming here?_

No. Nonono, this was the last thing she needed! He would kill the baby. If anyone could find a way, he would. He was that determined to do it, and Ukyou wasn't sure anything she could say would convince him otherwise this time.

She wanted to scream that the child wasn't his, that it was Tsuzuki's. Only the thought that that might make it Todoroki's enemy stayed her. Even if she ultimately feared Kazutaka more, Todoroki was the immediate threat. And she did not know him as she knew Kazutaka.

"You invited Muraki Kazutaka _here,_ " Kazuma exploded, "to _Meifu?_ Are you out of your fucking mind?! Why don't you just let the fox right into the fucking hen house, serve it a cup of tea while you're at it!"

"Now, Ms. Kazuma, is that any way to speak to your chief?"

"What chief? I don't see one around here. You're talking about committing _treason_! I can't believe Natsume would stand for it, either," she tried with a desperate look at the bespectacled young man.

But he met her gaze silently, before turning his eyes to Todoroki.

As for Nonomiya, though she trembled in outrage, Ukyou thought she caught the other woman muttering something under her breath. It sounded like a litany of some sort, but she didn't dare interrupt to find out.

"Is it?" Todoroki said. "Is it really treason when everything I've done has been to raise our race, yours and mine, up to the place it deserves? We are still human, after all, no matter what these shinigami bodies of ours are made of. And it isn't just the Living World that must be transformed. Look around you. Demons are fleeing Meifu left and right, and those who stay are subservient to mankind. Yet we still kowtow to the will of one man—who isn't even a man at all, but a demon," he snarled the word, as if it were mud to him, "answerable to no authority but himself."

"Your King is a _god_ ," Kazuma growled, as though that ought to explain everything he needed to understand.

But Todoroki just scoffed at the word. "Oh, I know what he is. God, demon—it's all the same thing, really. Our Great King Enma is a creature of darkness and dark ages—and he would keep us there with him if we let him. Look at the sort of behavior he allows of his most beloved subjects: wanton death and destruction! His own shinigami are more a threat to humanity than all the armies of Hell, and what does he do but grant a full pardon to his top murderer for hire? But then, can you blame him, when Tsuzuki brings in so many souls? No need to wait for nature to take its course with a cur as loyal as that!"

Kazuma should have known his hatred of Tsuzuki was at the heart of it. But could Todoroki really believe that justified deicide? "So the solution is a coup? What, are you going to put yourself on the throne?"

Todoroki shook his head. She still failed to grasp what to him was so obvious. But she would understand. Everyone would soon enough. "I'm not worthy to judge the dead. But there is someone who is. I, like the Baptist, am simply the one who paves the way for he who comes after me."

"Really, now. What makes you so certain your messiah even _wants_ to rule over the dead, Major Todoroki?"

At the sound of that voice, Ukyou felt her blood run cold. The smile dropped from Natsume's face, but Todoroki glowed as though he had just heard God Himself speak his name.

A rapturous shudder ran through him, and he turned to face the figure stepping toward him out of the shadows. Surely the use of his rank from life was just icing on the cake, but it was vindication of everything he had devoted his career to, even after death. It was all he could do not to fall to his knees in awe. That might have come across as too sycophantic. But he did bow low, all the careful words he had prepared abandoning him now that he looked into that beatific face. "Dr. Muraki, I can't tell you what an honor—"

But he never got any farther as Muraki stepped forward to embrace him, and instead thrust a blade up under Todoroki's ribs.

* * *

 **Note:** _The chapter title, "Cave canem," is Latin for "Beware of dog"._


End file.
